Welfare technology in Spanish - ¿cómo se dice?

After almost nine months at IT&Telecom, I realize that there is still a lot to do before we reach our goal - to establish a national Welfare Technology Forum. But if we think we have a long way to go before a minister is appointed as responsible or coordinator for everything related to the digitization of welfare, I can say that compared to Spain, we are light years ahead.

My view is based on impressions from a seminar organized by Ceapat, the Spanish Institute for Assistive Technology, where I was one of the speakers last Monday. The theme of the roundtable I was one of five participants in was "Accessability, technology and society".

My message during the conversation was that in Sweden we have gone from a view of the elderly and disabled, and how we create security and participation for them, as a collective to instead have the ambition to meet individual needs and see each person as the person they are. The "target group" for health and social care today is unique individuals with their own needs, for whom it is important to be able to choose from a range of both physical and digital aids with different designs and expressions.

I also highlighted that in Sweden we are now starting to see a trend where municipalities and county councils, when purchasing welfare technology, place great emphasis on being offered "open" platforms and interfaces. This means that buyers should be able to add and supplement any digital products and services to the platform afterwards, regardless of the supplier.

The message was very well received and the representatives from Ceapat noted that Spanish society has a long way to go before they even achieve what we in Sweden today more or less take for granted, such as requirements that the elderly and disabled are given good access to public facilities, for example.

Sometimes it's good to go away to see what it's like at home!

The seminar I attended was part of an "international week" of experience exchange organized by Ceapat, where at least a couple of Swedish companies were also present to take a closer look at the Spanish market - which is actually also largely Swedish: more than 150,000 Swedes, many of them pensioners, live fully or partly in Spain.