Sydney, Australia – 3 November 2011 – Today the Minster for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips announced the ‘Ageing Well at Home with Broadband’ project as part of the Victorian Government’s Broadband-Enabled Innovation Program.
The project is developing a broadband-enabled exercise program that will promote health and well being among elderly people, enabling them to stay in their homes longer and promote social inclusion.
Underpinning this project is a high-speed broadband capability provided by AARNet, Australia’s Academic and Research Network. AARNet will connect the 20 homes involved in the trial to the Australian Broadband Applications Laboratory at IBES over the AARNet3 network and the NBN.
Chris Hancock, CEO of AARNet said, “This project demonstrates the value of high speed networks in delivering next generation broadband services to benefit the wider community. This launch marks an important step forwards in realising the potential of broadband services and we look forwards to working with IBES to implement further initiatives.”
The technology will be developed for the Microsoft Kinect platform and will be initially trialed with 20 elderly residents in Brunswick – Victoria’s first NBN release site.
An 18 month trial will assess the effectiveness of broadband-enabled interactive gaming technology to assist the elderly in maintaining independence in their home through improved social connectedness, and physical and mental well being.
The project collaborators are: Moreland City Council, the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES), National Ageing Research Institute (NARI), Infoxchange, Microsoft, Council on the Ageing (COTA), Merri Community Health Services, NBN Co, and AARNet.
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Further Information on AARNet:
Almira Anthony
Max Australia
+61 2 9954 3492
almira.anthony@maxaustralia.com.au
About AARNet AARNet Pty Ltd (APL) is the company that operates Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet). It is a not-for-profit company limited by shares. The shareholders are 37 Australian universities and the CSIRO. AARNet provides high-capacity leading edge Internet services for the tertiary education and research sector communities and their research partners. AARNet serves more than one million end users who access the network through local area networks at member institutions. For further information, please visit:
www.aarnet.edu.au