In a cold February morning, COLABORAR and the Fraunhofer Portugal team met Mrs. ad Mr. Medeiros in their home for an interview/demo of the SmartCompanion, in the scope of their participation in the AAL4ALL Large Scale Trial.

The journalists of the Portuguese TV channel SIC arrived at the nice house and begun choosing the best angles to place the camera.

Mr. Fernando Medeiros showed how to use SmartCompanion for medication management, by receiving a medication reminder on the smartphone. Although Mr. Medeiros doesn’t feel like he needs notifications to remind him of his medication, he agrees that the feature is very helpful for some people. He also tried the intelligent fall detection feature and even simulated a near fall inside his home.

Mrs. Ludovina Medeiros shared with the journalists that while she was testing SmartCompanion for a period of two months, she benefited a lot from the activity monitor feature, that helped her stay more active as the application challenged her every day to achieve the activity goal considered healthy and by keeping her aware of her daily activity level.

In the end of the shooting, we enjoyed some delicious cookies from Gouveia (a city near Serra da Estrela), accompanied with Oporto wine – «it is a Portuguese home, indeed»!

Watch the complete news piece:

Now and then we ask participants in our projects to share their experience of participating on the tests with Fraunhofer Portugal. These interviews and demonstrations for the social media are an excellent opportunity for us to disseminate our projects. For the readers/audience, this is an opportunity of getting to know the most recent inventions in the area of Information and Communication Solutions.

Recently, the Portuguese newspaper “Público” interviewed one participant of the AAL4ALL Large Scale Trial – Mr. António Baptista – at his home.

After the initial introductions and after us being warmly greeted by Mr. Baptista and his spouse, the interview begun. The interview started off with a question about a family photo that sparked the interest of the journalist. Mr. Baptista told us about his family, shared some episodes related to his wedding day and told us about when they moved to the house where they live today. These personal memories intertwined with the traditions and the history of the city of Oporto. It was a delight for COLABORAR and the Fraunhofer team to listen to these stories.

Mr. Baptista showed the journalist the smartphone and explained the different features of the application he helped to test, always giving his grounded opinion about the features and highlighting his favourite ones.

Please, read the full interview here.