Coupled with the changing demographic in current society, there have been enormous improvements in technological capability. Technology, already an integral component of everyday life, holds great promise for supporting the health and independence of the aging population. Welfare technology is the application of technology to improve the lives of older adults.
“How to integrate global population aging and technology development to help address the growing demands for care facing many aging societies is both a challenge and an opportunity for innovation (Kleinman, 2021)”.
Welfare technology creates ever-expanding entrepreneurial opportunities to develop new products and services. There are new start-ups every day from low tech applications like a better pill box to high tech ubiquitous home health monitoring. Domains in which technology is most likely to be useful to elders include health, living environments, communication, work, learning, and education. New products and services, like robotics and artificial intelligence, are not yet widely available on the market but hold entrepreneurial opportunities for the future.
Clearly, opportunities exist for products and services to help elders improve their quality of life. But what’s the core element to benefit older adults with all the fast developing technology? The center would focus on existing and new collaborations on welfare technology in the international context. It is also expected to generate interdisciplinary collaborations among social scientists, engineers, healthcare and other domain experts to further develop innovative research and make communications on how to facilitate the service for aging societies through the wider spectrum of social technology development.
Our mission is to keep improving the optimal practice of welfare service with the assistance of modern technology and evidence based research.
Our major activities are:
- Curriculum development on Welfare technology for UEF WELMA doctoral program and wider communities
- Doctoral students’ recruitment and co-supervision amongst the center networks
- Apply funding for collaborations in the research area of welfare technology worldwide
In particular, the center will integrate research projects with the strategic needs of UEF, as well as build on the strengths of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, the Department of Social Sciences, and the Social Work discipline. Building on the results from prior years, new funding applications to expand training programmes for further multi-component interventions so that more people would benefit from it and the most recent technologies can be tested.
Center’s structure:
The center is established by the Department of Social Sciences, UEF. The department organizes an administrative board team, a scientific board with the member from the university, and advisory networks of international partners.
Contact us at: srcwt@uef.fi