The Unmet Needs
Patrick Roe
Cardiac
As always, John invites you and gives you a wonderful title for your presentation. I think it’s part of a game; it raises the bar, to find a more and more interesting title. One day he will ask you 'what is the meaning of life?’ or something like that. So anyway, the unmet need.
I am here representing a new coordination action Cardiac. I will talk about that more a bit later. Basically I have got two parts to my presentation. I want to address this issue of the unmet needs which actually is very close to some the issues that have just been raised so I am very pleased to have had that two introductions, because I think this follows on very nicely from that.
To do so I am going to show a DVD of a performance, theatre performance that was carried out in Brussels. I know some of you were there for that performance but I think it is quite interesting to see the DVD of one of the scenarios enacted by live actors at a Conference and it raises a lot of the unmet needs in a very practical way so I think it will be quite an entertaining and interesting way of raising some of these unmet needs. I will just go through some for the short analysis of that and then I would like to present three projects which addresses some of the issues of collaborative work that needs to be done together. I think it is thinking we are also coming to the same kind of conclusions and methodologies for trying to bring all stakeholders together.
This scenario was part of the work we developed the scenario and then took it to Alan and Maggie Newell in Dundee and they wrote the script to what you have just seen.
So I'd just like to go through some of the points and issues raised by this. Again, a lot of the issues already mentioned today. The first one I picked up is the user interfaces and the importance of them and there are several at work. The main one is the screen which seemed to be the main hub for communications.
There was also quite a lot of voice control in it as well. Now, you saw the frustration when she didn't give the exact answer that was expected, for instance instead of answering "yes" she said "absolutely" or "that's right" and the system didn't understand so very often the systems have trouble understanding just normal speech. They will target certain words and that seems to be a trend. So there's a huge issue about the understanding of speech, which I think was well illustrated in the examples.
Also, the remote control. During the emergency she suddenly had to revert to the remote control and obviously I think she coped very well in the emergency and she actually remembered to do things. It's not always that easy, especially if it's actions you're used to taking on a daily basis and you would not want to have to go through a programming. If it hadn't been programmed in advance the action, saying Joe's name would not have work. Also, the switching on and off of the cameras, obviously an important issue and there the system reminds her do you want to turn it off?
I think the other issue comes to environment control. Here we have the bath running, one example that was shown. Also, Joe finds his keys. Something that could be very useful to all of us at some stage.
I think there are many other examples that could have been shown, for instance, curtains, the front door, trying to see who is at the front door and things like that. I think access to information is very important, again keeping in touch with what is going on around us. Here he gets the bus and finds out what is the next bus that he can take and also phone numbers ringing up the golf club was another example and there could be many other examples of access to information.
And another issue that has been picked up on is social contact with people. You saw her having a video call with her daughter. How important that is. Also, here they chose to have a virtual warden talking to them, rather than a real person, and that raises the issue how much technology has to be included and how much do we want to maintain some kind of contact with real people. I think that was an idea to throw up this issue and very often people will actually say "no, I know I've got the technology but I would rather actually talk to someone to do this". It could be shopping in the supermarket. There are all sorts of examples where human contact is preferable.
Then everything to do with services and leisure. We saw them playing suduku or card games or any other kind of games and also shopping. That is often a service that is mentioned to help people do their shopping and having food delivered at the door.
Security is a big issue. He's being nagged to wear his bracelet, the alarm bracelet and also the warden who calls in everything every day and then the emergency call which happens and shows how it's handled in this particular instance.
I think all this also raises a lot of ethical issues. We see the GPS locator. He's been located to his wife knows where he is. I think there are all sorts of guidelines that need to be in place so people when they sign up for these services are absolutely aware of the information that will be given to other people about their private lives. So this is again just to flag up that issue.
I know the projects are coming out with ways to apply ethics to services and technologies and research programmes.
So I think this will end this part of my presentation and I now just want to briefly talk about Cardiac, a three year coordination action in RNID and accessible and assisted ICT. We actually came up with the name and then the acronym, but could have been the other way around.
Core objective is to advise the European Commission as to where to direct research funding in the near and more distant future. Within the context of information communication technologies for independent living, inclusion and governance.
So it really is ‑‑ we're acting as a kind of consultant to the European Commission to try and advise them as to what kind of research they should be funding over the next few years.
Hopefully, if we give good advice, the potential long term impact is that it should increase the amount of products and services that are available on the market in the field of accessible and assisted ICT. So it's a very long term aim, but if we can give good advice, hopefully this is the impact that it will have. So it's quite a responsibility but also I'd say a huge opportunity and to do this. We're going to address several issues, main ones are to do with future research priorities. I've given some examples. It could be inclusive human/machine interaction and network based applications and also the development and design aspects, but also crucially looking at making the business case. I think this is a very important part of the puzzle. I don't want to talk too much about this, but it's the work packages that reflect those priorities. I'd just again mention that we've got one that is based on technology transfer which as I mentioned is an important part of the puzzle. We have a special advisory board of external experts.
So how do we want to do this? We want to consult with all the relevant stakeholders. We believe they have to get them together to find this collaboration and also to get all the stakeholders to create the roadmap and the future research agenda roadmaps and we're going to use a methodology called the structured (inaudible) design process. The reason is to engage all the stakeholders, get them all around to create the roadmaps and then there's a sense of owning those roadmaps which increases the chance of the roadmaps being adopted by all the stakeholders. We heard from the previous speaker this is one of the key issues so just very briefly the stages of this process. First, you identify the stakeholders for a particular issue. Then you engage and consult with them to define your triggering question which might be which area of research will we be funding what do we need to do to make more products get to the market in this area and so on. Then draft a report to prepare and support the actual meeting. The meetings are ideally three days long but can be two days if you have issues resolved ahead of the meeting and then produce the roadmap. If the question is why are there not more products on the market? The answer one issue is we don't have proper collaboration between the private and good faith collaboration that could be one of the factors. Everybody need feeds in what they think are the important factors. Then cluster them into logical groups and everyone votes on what they think are the most important. Take the 10 to 20 that receive more votes and look at the links. If we resolve it this issue, will it impact on that issue? You debate that and once you get a two thirds majority, either a yes or a no and with this you create the roadmap. Had to here you see people voting for the different factors. I don't expect you to read this but just to give you an idea of what a roadmap can look like so you might be trying to resolve an issue at the top of the tree or the roadmap but before you can do that you have to resolve all the issues at the foot so it gives you a logical order in which. I don't expect you to read this Just to give you an idea what a roadmap can look like. For instance you might be trying to resolve an issue at the top of your tree or roadmap but before you can do that you have to resolve all the issues at foot of your roadmap so it gives you a logical order in which you have to tackle all the issues. The events, the first we are running is the end of October, 28th to 30th October in Cyprus on the theme of technology transfer, making the business case. The second is next year in June in Spain, more to do with inclusive human machine interaction. The third one in 2012 in Florence on network based systems, looking more at research priorities. Then we'll run a final event, probably January 2013 where we'll try and bring all the different roadmaps together in one overall research agenda roadmap. The final message today is: if you would like to be participating in either to be consulted or even participating in one of these collaboratory brain storming sessions, these are the addresses to contact, you can also contact John Gill or myself and if there's one particular topic would you like to have an input and I think it is a great chance to have influence on where funding from European Commission is going to go over the next five to ten years. This is your chance to have a say on that matter.