| Sumario: | Issue This project is mainly focused on the Jin-yue tribe in Nan-ao Township, a small tribe of about six hundred people who live in a remote mountain landscape. Over the last decade, through the combined efforts of the Jin-yue Tribal Community Development Association and their university partners, we have recovered and preserved traditional Jin-yue cultural skills. However, there has been no significant collective effort dedicated to health rehabilitation or health promotion in the Nan-ao Township. We are establishing an experimental field that provides smart technology to assist the indigenous elderly in this tribe. Content Even though various Living Labs have been implemented in Europe, the traditional research approach remains dominant at different stages of product development or service innovation, rather than actually including users in a co-creator approach1. Still, there have been promising efforts to bring Living Lab methodologies closer to the ideal of user innovation2,3. Some researchers have conceived Living Labs as an experimental environment aimed at shaping technology for real-life contexts and have suggested that it is especially well suited to ICT innovation for rural areas or for the elderly4. Key factors in designing a living lab include the question of how to achieve a sufficient degree of cultural competence in designing projects that might empower users/consumers/citizens5. This project establishes an experimental field that provides technology to assist the indigenous elderly. Structure There will be 4 oral presentations followed by a panel discussion. Presentations include the following specific projects: (i) Participatory biomedical approach with partnership building; (ii) Putting in place an IT platform for healthcare management; (iii) Integrating medical devices for homecare into existing eldercare services; (iv) Situating communication devices in tribal communities to enhance convenience in daily life as a way of facilitating tribal community building. Conclusion Our research team has transformed an indigenous tribe into 'an experimentation environment where technology helps in real-life contexts'. This platform can serve as a foundation for innovating Gerontechnology by all stake holders in this indigenous tribe. The community thereby becomes a basic unit in developing self-sustained business and in distributing neighborhood health information. Such neighborhoods turn out to be both mobilization units and Living Labs for gathering data on local culture and eco-region planning.
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