Cutting-edge examples of future & emerging technologies (FET) are currently in the spotlight at the "FET 11" exhibition in Budapest from 4-6 May. This exhibition features 28 projects from across a wide range of disciplines that demonstrate the potential of long term research in information and communication technologies (ICT) for the way our lives will look in the future. It presents a number of achievements as well as early stage results, ideas and prototypes, illustrating the wide variety of disciplines, technologies and domains involved in future and emerging information technologies. Six FET projects have been selected to compete for two top spots in the area of research funding . This MEMO gives further details of some of the other projects on display at "FET 11" in Budapest.

The number of Europeans aged 65+ is expected to increase by 45% between 2008 and 2030, and even further to over 30% of the population by 2060. This major challenge needs to be tackled at EU level to help older Europeans enjoy an active and healthy life. Meeting in Brussels for the first time today, an EU-led Steering Group will discuss how to improve the health and quality of life of older people, increase sustainability of healthcare systems and create new growth and market opportunities for Europe. This high level Steering Group is jointly chaired by Vice President Neelie Kroes and Commissioner John Dalli and includes Member States, regions, industry, health- and social care professionals, elderly and patient organisations and other interest groups. The strategy will form an integral part of Europe 2020's Innovation Union and Digital Agenda flagships.

2012 is the European Year of Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations. A chance for all of us to reflect on how Europeans are living longer and staying healthier than ever before — and to realise the opportunities that represents.

On behalf of the European Commission, Technosite, NOVA and CNIPA are carrying out the “Monitoring eAccessibility” Study. This study will provide an overview of the status and progress of eAccessibility-related policies and technologies in 14 selected European countries and three non-European countries. The topic of this Study is “eAccessibility”, in other words the ways that people with disabilities and others (such as older people) overcome the technical barriers and difficulties they experience when trying to participate on equal terms in the information society. ICT is increasingly essential for daily life and work. ICT contributes to efficiency and quality of public services, business opportunities, workers' productivity and overall competitiveness. The survey is open until 8 May.

The European Commission is seeking citizens' and other interested parties' views on how the EU can help to deliver widespread benefits to the quality and efficiency of healthcare by applying information and communication technologies (ICT) (so-called 'eHealth'). ICT is already playing a central role in addressing the numerous challenges faced by healthcare systems across the EU including an ageing population, a rise in chronic diseases, budget cuts and a shortage of healthcare workers by for example allowing remote diagnosis, remote monitoring of patients' condition and secure sharing of patient records between healthcare professionals. However, there is considerable potential to develop eHealth much further in the future. eHealth can also make an important contribution to allowing people, especially older people, to enjoy more dignified and independent lives. More and more patients are pro-actively using technology to learn about illnesses and even to manage their conditions. eHealth will never replace the human touch but it can enable healthcare workers to dedicate more time to direct contacts with patients. Promoting eHealth is a key objective of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The online public consultation runs until 25 May. The answers will feed into the preparation of the eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020 that the Commission is due to present before the end of 2011.

The call for contributions for next AAL Forum has been published. AAL invites contributions from researchers and practitioners that wish to contribute to the discussion. Closing date of call for contributions is extended to 12 May 2011. The annual conference of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP), the AAL Forum, this year in its third edition, will take place in Lecce, Italy, between 26 and 28 September 2011. The objective of the Forum – which will gather industry stakeholders, researchers, entrepreneurs, end-users and policy makers – is three-fold: assess progress and show concrete results of the AAL Joint Programme projects; focus on possible ways to bring AAL innovative solutions to the market; discuss relevant EU initiatives in the field, particularly the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing.

A series of information days on Call 4 of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme will organised in the coming weeks in Brussels and in the Member States.

More than one hundred thousand Europeans were reached in about 5,000 telecentres in 30 countries across Europe in the 2011 Get Online Week campaign. Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission thanked telecentre staff and hailed them ‘European heroes’. For about one in six of those 112,000 this was the first time they had ever used the internet. Their technology journey was just starting. Gabi Barna, Chair of Telecentre-Europe, and Director of EOS in Romania said: “The people who visited telecentres during Get Online Week, will be supported this week, and next week, and likely for a number of weeks to come. They started a journey of discovery about computers and the internet, which will lead them to benefit from better job prospects and wage premiums. They will have better social, community and civic connections, and personal economic savings and benefits to them, as well as macro-economic savings and benefits to their governments’ and to industry”. The rest, just over 90,000 people, had already started their journey, but were in a telecentre being introduced to online services for the first time, or receiving ongoing support or learning. This ongoing support that local telecentres provide is vital.

At its meeting of 9 and 10 March the EU Competitiveness Council endorsed the work undertaken so far in preparing the pilot European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on active and healthy ageing. In particular, the Council took "note of the Commission's progress in setting up a high level Steering Group (SG) (…), with a view to undertaking preparatory work for the pilot including, notably, drawing up recommendations for a Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP), in summer 2011." Additionally, the Council welcomed "the envisaged participation of representatives of Belgium, Spain, Hungary and Poland in the work of the SG with a view to contributing to this work from the Member States' perspective."

The EU Competitiveness Council - meeting in Brussels on 9 and 10 March - is due to adopt Conclusions on the work undertaken so far in preparing the pilot European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on active and healthy ageing. This EIP is part of the EU's "Innovation Union" and seeks to improve older people's quality of life and to lead to more efficient care solutions and new business opportunities. The Council is due to agree on the four countries who will take part in this group at Ministerial level (Belgium, Spain, Hungary and Poland) joining other stakeholders across the sectors concerned. Between November 2010 and late January 2011, the European Commission ran a public consultation asking respondents to help identify current barriers to innovation and opportunities in the field of active and healthy ageing.

European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes is marking the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day with a speech in Budapest, warning that the ICT sector must find a new gender balance if it wants to avoid underperformance in coming years. Even though women programmed the first computer Kroes challenged the audience: "Can anyone name a woman who set up and runs their own huge ICT company? No, of course not. In that hall of fame, the names you think of are Jobs, Gates, the Google guys, the Skype guys, Zuckerberg and his friends. I want to see a woman on that list." The Commission estimates the European ICT sector will face a shortfall of 700,000 skilled workers by 2015, partly explained by a lack of women engineering and computing graduates. "We need to tackle the problem early and from many angles," Kroes said while noting the Commission's Code of Practice for Women in ICT now has 60 signatories, and that leading companies such as IBM and Intel are taking "steps in the right direction." "Companies and governments need to do more than run networks and camps - the effort must range from better child care to a better balance of subjects in the school system." "From classrooms to boardrooms to garage start-ups: my message is the same. There is no point in getting half of Europe digital. There is no place for macho nonsense in our digital future. Until the whole sector understands this and acts on it, we will remain at risk of a massive skills gap and we will hold Europe back."

It is estimated that 30% of Europeans have never used the internet. GetOnlineWeek2011 is a campaign that aims to get more than 100,000 new computer users online. It will take place all over Europe from 28th February to 5th March 2011 and is organised by Telecentre-Europe, a not-for-profit association that encompasses a network of nearly 30,000 centres to provide help, support and training on how to use a computer and the internet. More than 4000 telecentres in 33 European countries will celebrate the GetOnlineWeek2011. They will organise hundreds of events, such as training sessions, competitions, and games in order to highlight the key role of ICT skills in today's society (you can find the map of participating events across Europe here: http://www.ebaltics.com/onlineweek2011). The aim is to encourage people that already use the internet to go to a Telecentre with a friend that is not yet an internet user in order to experience digital technologies and the online environment. By promoting digital inclusion, GetOnlineWeek2011 is directly relevant to Europe 2020's Digital Agenda for Europe and, in particular, to its objective to halve the proportion of people who have never used the internet by 2015. This is why Neelie Kroes has given her patronage to the campaign and officially launched it by visiting a telecentre in Brussels on the 24th February.

Europe has had many information society strategies, eEurope (1999), i2010 (2005) and Digital Agenda for Europe (2010). eGovernment, eHealth, and eInclusion are the three policy sub-domains comprising the societal public services pillar which is the backbone of all of these strategic frameworks. Given the emphasis that the new overarching EU2020 Strategy places on tackling grand societal challenges and turning them into economic opportunities, the relevance of these three domains is today even higher than in the past. Inclusive Innovation is often called the I2 paradigm. It is, thus, of the uttermost importance today to take stock of what has been achieved, not simply for reasons of accountability of public spending, but also in order to derive lessons and insights that can improve the efforts towards 2020. Regardless of the chosen approach, papers should not be merely descriptive of data (in whatever form, statistics, survey results, in depth case studies) but ideally would propose a new interpretative and theoretical framework supported by illustrative and explanatory empirical evidence. The deadline for article submission is: April 25, 2010.

The European research project GUIDE (www.guide-project.eu) is currently conducting an online survey on accessibility requirements for Web-TV platforms and applications. GUIDE is developing an adaptive accessibility framework and development tools for STB/Connected TV developers, and the results of this survey will support researchers in the project to better addres! s the needs and requirements of the industry. It mostly targets professionals of areas like broadcasting, IPTV, Web&TV application development, STB and Connected TV platforms, user interface design, research and standardisation. The survey is open until 14 February 2011.

In the conclusions of its meeting of 4 February, the European Council endorses the Commission's proposal for an Innovation Union, and in particular the launch of a European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, by stating that: "Innovation contributes to tackling the most critical societal challenges we are facing. Europe’s expertise and resources must be mobilized in a coherent manner and synergies between the EU and the Member States must be fostered in order to ensure that innovations with a societal benefit get to the market quicker. Joint programming should be developed. The launch of the pilot Innovation Partnership on active and healthy ageing is an important step in that context."

The animators or facilitators of Public Internet Centers have a key role to play, they are not only ICT trainers but also socio-cultural mediators. They are the promoters of disadvantaged users' inclusion. Today, their profile and status differ greatly from one country to the other as well as their access to formal and non formal training. VET4e-I is a project carried out with the support of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme of the European Union. It proposes to develop an innovative VET (Vocational Education and Training) solution to help European countries to cope with the common challenge of e-Inclusion. The project is developing a certifiable training curriculum for e-Inclusion facilitators focused on the development of key competences of users at risk of social exclusion, with a view to their empowerment in the knowledge society. This training curriculum will be based on an innovative blended learning environment inspired in Web 2.0 as well as on user-centred didactics. The VET4e-I project’s team is now opening the first modules of its training curriculum of e-facilitators for free. Register on online before 10th February and access a set of 11 modules. Local partners in four countries, France, Bulgaria, Spain and Italy, will be running these training courses.

The EU-funded (Sixth Framework Programme for research) project 'Vital assistance for the elderly' (VITAL) has developed an integrated set of technologies and a unifying platform to provide internet-based services and applications to elderly users. The consortium has a sound plan for exploiting the project's results, including the service component and capitalising on the social network market. Meticube, an SME with a dedicated business strategy for the health care and ambient assisted living (AAL) markets, will lead the market rollout of this plan.

This Information day will offer potential participants the opportunity to share ideas and network with potential partners on the following objectives: ICT Solutions for Fall prevention and ICT and Ageing network ; Digital competences and social inclusion ; e-accessibility. This event is organised prior to the general CIP Call 5 Info Day of 28 February 2011. The info day will be webstreamed.

In keeping with the ambitious digital agenda goals set in the EU 2020, the European Commission has approved, under the EU guidelines for state aid to broadband, the use of over €1.8 billion public funds for broadband development to support economic recovery, inclusive growth and the long term competitiveness of the EU. The public funds are aimed to ensure that all citizens have access to high speed Internet access in the European Union, including in rural or remote areas.

The preparation of AAL call 4 is in full swing. The AAL partner states gave priority to the topics “Mobility” and “Information & Learning & User Interfaces”. The AAL JP is eager to receive input from the AAL community regarding these topical areas. Also ideas are welcome for combining both areas. Which gaps do you observe and what are the priorities, what can be the potential impact, what is the state of the art and how can multinational collaboration enable improvement for the European situation? And – last but not least – please provide us with information about activities that are already ongoing in your country in these topical areas! To enable the AAL community to contribute to the call 4 definition, an open consultation process is planned.