

There are several paradigms behind the general aim of extending the average human life expectancy without extending suffering. The most challenging one is “active ageing” put forward by the World Health Organization. The new paradigm of active ageing takes the life-course perspective and different life styles into account when distinguishing between different groups of older people. Active ageing refers in this context to a continuous participation in social, economic, cultural, spiritual and civic affairs, not just the ability to be physically active or part of the labour force. Active ageing views elderly people as active participants in an age-integrated society. An interesting way for advancing research on concepts to match supply and demand can be derived from focusing on promising ICT application fields for age-based innovations. In fields like learning, employment, health, housing and others a lot of ICT-based applications for active ageing can be found. This article argues that ICT for active ageing is a new promising framework to tackle the challenges of ageing societies, to transform them into opportunities and to use as many opportunities of ageing societies as possible.