A critical problem for European society is the increasing ageing of the population. Social protection schemes are therefore required for a greater number of people during an extended period of their lives. Currently, social assistance needs fail to be met due to scarce resources. The situation of unsatisfied social demand can only deteriorate in the short term due to the increased number of potential clients, requests for improved quality of assistance, and demands for new services. 

The aim of SAID project is to develop an innovative social assistance infrastructure to provide more efficient social care for elderly persons, improving both services and access. SAID will support a number of services under Digital TV infrastructure.

The project involves three areas of research: novel developments for digital television, the development of intelligent agents (personalised assistants adapted to specific user’s characteristics), and new approaches for simplified user interfaces, mobile information access, and data management specifically designed for the elderly. 

The MHP/Open TV Digital TV infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the proposed telematics services; the distributed client side of the application based on autonomous agents and simplified personalised interfaces; the control post composed of the database system, console interfaces, and GPRS-based mobile information structure; and a pilot application that tests the system under real conditions.