

The technological challenge to provide systems for senior citizens that could foster the different facets of life quality perception demand system architectures for applications and new services that overcome the isolated applications of the past. The new system would integrate customary sociosanitary care, with new devices to provide new services. Four categories of AAL Services are addressed: a) Social Integration; b) Daily Life Support; c) Feel safe and protected; and d) Mobility. The idea was to identify common functional components, and to offer new services integrated with new technologies to care older persons. The needs that the older person could satisfy with the Ambient Assisted Living System are four-fold. The users will determine who, when and for which purpose this information is shared with others. The knowledge about their functional status could be used by the elderly to increase or adapt the amount and type of care. This chapter has two aims: on one hand, the reflection about older person needs and requirements; on the other hand the reflection about new AAL Services on the top of a universal platform. Some platform components that manage basic information gathered from sensors and other information sources, such as clinical history and agenda of the user, and create a representation of the context of the person. Any software component in the platform can subscribe to context events in order to use this information to provide a better user experience and offer personalized services to the user in a proactive way. Finally, the open and distributed nature of the services should lead to more applied services that integrate all the care but also improved alternatives for different parts of the existing system, both at the level of application and the platform itself.
The AAL system could be a important part in the new design and offer of new services to care with and for older people and with high quality.