Zaragoza, 2 March 2020.- Ibernex, the Pikolin Group’s Aragon-based company, which develops health-oriented care and safety solutions, has launched a technological challenge through Aragón Open Future. This Open Innovation initiative from Telefónica, in partnership with T-ZIR, aims to discover how new technologies can improve people's quality of life, by enabling predictive telecare. The challenge is directed at entrepreneurs, startups, SMEs, universities and technological centres.

According to Spain's National Institute of Statistics (INE), in 2018, 19.1% of the Spanish population, amounting to 850,000 individuals, was aged over 65 years old and lived alone. If the current trends were to continue, the rate of dependence in Spain would rise from the current rate of 53.5% to 62.2% in 2031 and reach 87.7% by 2066. There are currently 900,000 people in Spain who benefit from telecare services, and 25% of this total are members of the older population.

Through the technological challenge launched through Aragón Open Future, Ibernex is seeking solutions that make it possible to design a predictive, advanced telecare service that is supplemented by innovative technology. They want to be able to identify living habits, thus making it possible to predict abnormal, degenerative or risky situations and trigger alerts (by studying activity patterns and detecting changes in these, localisation both indoors and outside, etc.) for interested parties (relatives, medical teams, citizen safety services, and so on) in a proactive way.

The technological solutions they are seeking through the launch of this call for open innovation proposals must meet the goal of real-time remote monitoring of users and must use an optimal mix of technology applied to home-based care for individuals and a non-intrusive, intuitive user experience, performed remotely and connected in real time.

Via this call for proposals, Ibernex is attempting to cover, entirely or partially, several specific objectives. The first is to enable predictive monitoring of users based on indoor localisation and behaviour patterns – for example, if the average activity starting time is at 8 a.m. and by 9 a.m. no activity has been detected, this can reveal incidents such as falls or lack of activity. The second objective consists of analysing the information gathered through monitoring and of developing a smart algorithm capable of detecting behavioural changes associated with physical or cognitive impairment. The third involves developing a communication platform that allows users to receive alerts and pass them on to relatives or the emergency services.

The Aragon-based company encompasses solutions based on cutting-edge technology – such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep-learning-based predictive analysis models, IoT sensors and localisation or tracking systems – to successfully meet the challenge launched through Aragón Open Future.