The connected vitality system: Enhancing social presence for older adults

The social isolation of older adults in Europe is a key and continuously growing issue that demands immediate attention. Older adults might feel isolated and lonely mainly because they lack human contact and social support. This is because their closest relatives, such as their children and grandchildren, live and work at distant places, while contact with friends and care professionals is also rare. In this paper a tele-presence system is presented, which enables social presence and facilitates social interaction contributing to e-Inclusion of older adults. This is supported by the results obtained in this work based on the conducted user studies with older adults and expert evaluations.