In 2015, the European Commission recognized the need for a new, innovative approach to stimulate the uptake of IoT in Europe. The EC invited an influential group of industry and academic leaders to discuss what to do. From this, the Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation, the AIOTI, was born.
Today, AIOTI is hundreds of members strong and includes big corporations, SME’s, startups, universities, research labs, institutes, and end-users. These participants are all keen to stimulate IoT Innovation in Europe.
Who’s in
Together with big partners like Bosch, Schneider, Philips, IBM, NOKIA, SAMSUNG and other silicon vendors like Infineon and NXP, STMicroelectronics has been part of the story from the beginning as a founding member. Phase 1 of the project, which finished in mid-2016, produced a series of recommendations that were published and led to support of the IoT European Large Scale Pilots that started early 2017.
Now, less than two years after the inauguration of the Alliance, the AIOTI became an independent, member-driven Association.
Today, ST is leading Working Group 5 (WG5), which is looking at smart living environments that support the elderly to stay active, independent and out of institutional care settings; this effort also reduces costs for care systems.
Watch this video to learn about several of the working groups:
This effort is important because of the significant social and economic implications of an aging population. An outgrowth of WG5 is its contributions to help European countries face this challenge. The challenge is big, as today roughly 25% of the population is elderly (defined as 60+). Worse, forecasters predict in 2050 this could go up to 35% or more.
The social and economic implications of an aging population demand we find ways to turn related challenges into real opportunities.
At a WG5 workshop last autumn in Paris, the members agreed to define conditions to demonstrate the efficiency of technological enablers (standardization, interoperability, security & privacy, personalization, modularity & continuous process).
These conditions include performing best-practices benchmarking and collaborating to fully understand the value chain for delivery of goods and services to consumers. The WG aims to focus on the consumers’ experience to ensure they meet the goal of aging well.
Tech to use
The working group agreed that technologies built on scalable, robust, affordable, secure, and flexible platforms are required. Moreover, Big Data and analytics can make a substantial contribution. To achieve its goals, WG5 will need to encourage the synergies between the “Ageing Well” ecosystem and the IoT ecosystem. It’ll do this by “creating value for the individual,” as mentioned by Mr. Javier Colas, VP of Medtronic Europe, in his workshop keynote.
Under the chairmanship of Mustapha Bouraoui, VP Strategic Marketing EMEA, STMicroelectronics, and with the support of WG5 co-chair Sergio Guillen, CIO in MYSPHERA and Deputy Coordinator and Business Manager in ACTIVAGE Large Scale Pilot, the working group decided to emphasize and develop “Privacy by Design” as a strong focus of its activities in its 2 testbeds/living labs (LifeSTech at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Silver Lab IRT-Nanoelec).
“The translation of the relevant use cases and services into markets for new devices and new applications represents a huge opportunity for all of the IoT ecosystem and for technology providers,” stated Mustapha Bouraoui, VP Strategic Marketing, EMEA at STMicroelectronics and AIOTI WG5 chairman. “ST is supporting WG5 to achieve efficient and fast use-case prototyping,” he added.
