New assisted technologies aim to make life easier for the elderly and disabled

"Assisted Technologies have come a long way since the creation of emergency alarms in the UK in the forties," said Parliamentary Secretary for rights of persons with disability and active ageing Justyne Caruana.

Caruana said that technology has come a long way on the international level and that Malta needs to keep up with these changes.

"The technological changes taking place nowadays mean that disabled people and the elderly can continue to live an independent, safe and healthy lifestyle in spite of everything," Caruana said.

Addressing journalists, students and stakeholders at the seminar, Cauana said that a lot needs to be done by way of raising awareness about the effectiveness and necessity of assisted technologies.

“The seminar being organized today is an excellent example of how this awareness can be achieved,” Caruana added ahead of the exhibition held at the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta.

“Technology should not be treated simply as a way to create exciting new  gadgets, but it is a way to truly change and affect people's lives,” Caruana said.

Among the gadgets on display, there were stairlifts, speech synthesizers and wireless blood glucose monitoring systems.

“All the gadgets being displayed and developed at the moment aim to enable the more vulnerable members of society to live as independently as possible,” said Parliamentary Secretary for competitiveness and economic growth Jose Herrera.

“It is essential that people have an awareness of technology and how it can benefit them personally, as new technologies are becoming increasingly user-friendly and that is the key for the more vulnerable members of society,” he added.

Herrera said that this seminar was the first of its kind and that it was a testament to the government’s commitment to improving the quality of life for the elderly and the disabled.

“One of the ways this can be done is to bridge the so-called digital divide by making technology more user-friendly. The government recently launched a computer literacy program to teach basic internet, social media and e-mail use to the elderly,” Herrera said.

Caruana added that the government is making every effort to keep up with the current technologies being developed around the world.

“The governments move from Telecare to Telecare plus is evidence of this fact,” she added.

“Various services have already been added like pill dispensers, smart pendants to monitor movement as well as flood and gas detectors. There are other plans to integrate patient medical records into the smart pendant system in the future,” Caruana said.

Caruana added that the secretariat was trying hard to secure more public private partnerships in order to create more equipment in the sector such as sensors that would be attached to clothes to monitor cardio-vascular activity and physical movements of the wearers, along with bracelets that monitor the physical movements of people who have dementia.

The Dean of the Faculty for Information and Communications Technology, Ernest Cachia praised the young students present at the seminar and said that it was clear that young people recognized the importance of assisted technologies in our society.

“Such events show that people understand the importance of technology to improve quality of life, but now the focus needs to shift to ease of access.”

Cachia thanked the students who showed interest in the sector and said he looked forward to more events of the kind, where student participation would once again be central.