Many researchers and product developers are striving toward achieving ICT-enabled independence of older adults by setting up Enhanced Living Environments (ELEs). Technological solutions, which are often based on the Internet of Things (IoT), show great potential in providing support for Active Aging. To enhance the quality of life for older adults and overcome challenges in enabling individuals to achieve their full potential in terms of physical, social, and mental well-being, numerous proof-of-concept systems have been built. These systems, often labeled as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), vary greatly in targeting different user needs. This paper presents our contribution using SmartHabits, which is an intelligent privacy-aware home care assistance system. The novel system comprising smart home-based and cloud-based parts uses machine-learning technology to provide peace of mind to informal caregivers caring for persons living alone. It does so by learning the user’s typical daily activity patterns and automatically issuing warnings if an unusual situation is detected. The system was designed and implemented from scratch, building upon existing practices from IoT reference architecture and microservices. The system was deployed in several homes of real users for six months, and we will be sharing our findings in this paper.

The EU project Pharaon aims to support older European adults by integrating digital services, tools, interoperable open platforms, and devices. One of the objectives is to validate the integrated solutions in large-scale pilots. The integration of mature solutions and existing systems is one of the preconditions for the successful realization of the different aims of the pilots. One such solution is an intelligent, privacy-aware home-care assistance system, SmartHabits. After briefly introducing the Pharaon and SmartHabits, the authors propose different Pharaon models in the Ambient/Active Assisted Living (AAL) domain, namely the Pharaon conceptual model, Pharaon reference logical architecture view, AAL ecosystem model, meta AAL ecosystem model, and Pharaon ecosystem and governance models. Building on the proposed models, the authors provide details of the holistic integration and deployment process of the SmartHabits system into the Pharaon ecosystem. Both technical and supporting integration challenges and activities are discussed. Technical activities, including syntactic and semantic integration and securing the transfer of the Pharaon sensitive data, are among the priorities. Supporting activities include achieving legal and regulatory compliance, device procurement, and use-case co-designing in COVID-19 conditions.

This paper discusses a new concept of competence management, i.e. competence development and competence retainsion within telecom research and development organizations. According to this new approach, a competent person is an individual that has competencies in various areas and can easily adapt to new functions and related requirements, in contrast to an individual who is specialized in a narrow field only. The new approach is extremely important in the times when telecom research and development organizations are constantly under pressure to decrease projects' development time and costs and at the same time retain the high quality of their products. The paper also elaborates the relationship between knowledge and competence. Ericsson Competence Management Process is used as the base for the analysis.