ISLANDS, is the latest completed project with which we are involved. It is a European co-funded research project in the thematic area "Quality of Life" of the Fifth European Community Framework Programme. ISLANDS aims to develop services in the mental health field for people living in remote areas, such as islands. These remote places often lack the necessary equipment for diagnosing, consulting and treating patients; and frequently have no mental healthcare centers or psychiatric clinics to look after the patients. This may require the patient to travel. The project objective is to develop modular, non-conventional, remote psycho-therapeutic assistance for remote areas. This is approached by identifying the specific needs of patients, their informal carers and health professionals, defining different service categories for the user groups, recognizing the most acute risks and compensation strategies, and developing remote services in diagnosing, counselling and even treatment of psychological disorders, and appropriate content and service provision. It is hoped that by these means the quality of life of the users, the quality of mental healthcare and the economic strength of the region would improve and outweigh the costs of implementing action and support programmes. Preventing psychological problems and supporting a healthy lifestyle is one way to improve health services. At the same time scientific progress has to develop more efficient strategies. Modern information technology will be used to plan and disseminate information about prevention, therapy and self-help techniques using modern information technology. Telepsychiatry is the practice of mental healthcare using interactive audiovisual and data communications to provide and support mental healthcare when there is long distance between the participants. Information is transmitted via high-speed communication lines. It includes medical care delivery, diagnosis, consultation, treatment information, as well as education. The following benefits are envisaged:

• Improves access to medical care for geographically or socio- economically isolated patients.
• Opportunity for remote areas to provide the proper health care services to their patients
• Cost effective approach, prevents unnecessary travel
• Promotes psycho-education
• Facilitates community education concerning mental health care topics.
• Augments the quality, continuity and affordability of medical care.
• Effectively utilizes local medical resources by creating an integrated state wide network of primary and secondary care for citizens.
• May help secure the financial stability of rural hospitals and allow patients to obtain medical consultation in their own community.

Sesami is:
An empowerment tool for the elderly and people with disabilities A way for organisations and businesses to provide all of their customers with the highest level of service.
A simple, logical, IT-based system that distributes vital information to those who need it most.
A quantifiable accessibility rating system for all buildings A language-independent, low-cost solution that can be implemented anywhere.
A benefit provider to the community at large.
Sesami is a tool that helps integrate the elderly and people with disabilities fully into society. These groups are often excluded from pursuing normal activities due to a lack of accessibility information. People are discouraged from visiting unfamiliar places as they are unsure of their ability to access the facilities that they require. Sesami solves many problems associated with mobility by instantly disseminating relevant information about buildings and services to all users.
By providing their personal card number users can easily specify their accessibility requirements and can check whether a facility meets these prerequisites before even leaving their homes. This opens a world of opportunity to the elderly and people with disabilities and attracts more customers to participating businesses. Users will receive Sesami User Cards and organisations will receive building cards for display near their entry points. Additionally, building information will be stored online so that users can access it from anywhere.
Sesami will potentially lead to the development of international standards that will assist with maintaining, improving and extending the lifestyle of the elderly and people with disabilities.

Sesami

In the recent past within many E.U. member states and regions, there are a number of "e-government" projects and initiatives that are pursuing pervasive digital links amongst the various diverse communities that are seen as key actors in the provision of and development towards e.Europe. To date, effective results have been achieved in the front-office or user side. Indeed, while attractive multi-channel portals are available, they are not often coupled, or well integrated with appropriate back- end environments, that manage both volume and diversity of relevant, official, heterogeneous,legacy data. (e.g. enterprise records, cadastral maps, citizen registry) and other various data sets required by many for working successfully to accomplish daily tasks. While there have been many positive developments and progress made towards an e-society, through the development and use of multi channel portal technology. There is, however, a number of issues and developments that require to be addressed to create an information environment that fully provides for the diverse needs of the potential users. Open web service provision is essential to modern government. It provides a means of delivering services and information to enterprises on demand, as well as an effective methodology for receiving information and feedback. Governments have a wealth of information of interest to companies. Much has been accumulated over time from Sme and other business related data from both specific and other administrative activity. Much of this today is locked up in applications that companies have limited access to. As regular business activity completes the move to electronic infrastructures, new opportunities arise to make this service a key driver for boosting and underpinning business and business decision making. In addition,the same infrastructure can be used to simplify governmental administrative procedures through the use of seamless document handling solutions, where institutional data, geographical data, legacy data are melded together. Providing web services allows cost effective access, avoiding delay and unwanted travel. It provides all levels of government service to increase levels of services, improving opportunity and competitiveness within their regional area. The two main objectives of Bizmap.net are: " to validate an open flexible hub, based on adaptive web services, developed mostly from the Panta Rei e.government project, able to provide full cycle service; " to integrate "back office" systems and test the marketing model (brokerage) to deploy the outflows or "e.service pack services" across Europe. Specific opportunities arise with the new Eastern countries, where there is a potentially high demand for consolidated information management and delivery models. The expansion of the eTEN community to 25 countries poses a challenge to all of those involved in the exploitation of Bizmap.net services and also in how to integrate the new and existing member states into a cohesive community. The specific application goal of Bizmap.net consists in the integration of existing commercial solutions of: 1. Electronic document system, having workflow management capability 2. Web based standard federated GIS system 3. SQL database system of updated extracts of enterprise and citizen registry into one single framework, through the configuration of generic web services, communicating via XML modifiable schemas and using UDDI server specifications, by simple encapsulation service requests in any suitable e.government portal. The cooperative interaction of Chamber of Commerce, Local Authority and specialised service centers (i.e. agency, mixed company or any other brokering entity) would be the best solution to improve business development in our "hyper" competitive society. Bizmap.net will deploy services of common interest and it will have the scalability and reliability required to potentially accommodate all European SME'S 24 hour 7 days service requests, under strict deadline and modest budget expenditure, reaching a target mass market. Bizmap.net is expected to deliver outstanding return of investment (ROI), for it is designed as a build once use many that will reap further dividends as more enterprises adopt the "e.service pack". The team responsible for this phase is mainly composed of people with track records, experience and the statutory commitment to validate the solution and to effectively deploy Bizmap.net e.services within their own territory and, acting as amplifiers, spread its knowledge to other sites in the near future. The consortium has all the key actor profiles involved in the full cycle of business data management, with a good balance of the different expertise. Furthermore the activity involves initially five countries,providing local feedback and supporting the necessary inputs for time-to-market and a locally supported commercial exploitation. While each region involved in the project has drawn up strategic plans for the future and is investing in providing an electronic infrastructure, there is a need to integrate services, organisations information and people into a dynamic online community environment. This environment will succeed by understanding all levels of user needs, whether information suppliers or customers. It is considered by all that a fundamental step is to undertake a full feasibility and market validation phase, in order to define both the business and Organisation model that will be developed and adopted as the basis for the overall project. This phase will validate the brokerage model, utilising valuable sets of representative end-users, piloting pre-defined services, and finally preparing the business plan that will be the basis for obtaining support for project approval and prepare the ground for service deployment. Finally the management structure and the work plan are specifically designed to guarantee a qualified undertaking of the activities and to achieve the planned results, within time and budget limits.

The European Institute of Women's Health in conjunction with the Irish Cancer Society and Connect.ie announced an update of the cancer information site for women. The information is now available in French and Italian. The project was first launched by Mr. Kamphausen of DG V "Europe Against Cancer" at the European Commission Offices in Molesworth St.,Dublin, in 1996. Initially the cancer information was made available on a set of computer diskettes. This followed on research completed by the project that showed women's use of the media to gather information about health issues and their lack of access to good technology.

To overcome the problems discovered in the research and to encourage women to use the new technologies, a computer disc set was developed. The computer disc was distributed to different women's groups, clubs and organisations. It is difficult to remember that in 1996, many women had only access, at best, to 286 computers with no CD ROM Drive. Having the pack on disc enabled these groups access, view and print out high quality information at a low cost. The pack came with a built in browser.

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Thank you for visiting the SeniorOnline Service. This service provides Senior's with information, support, services and software. We aim to encourage, develop and increase the use of new technologies with older people. This has already been introduced through the Cyber Te@room at St Annes Chruch. All are welcome to attend the Cyber Te@room. It opens from 12.00 - 3.00, Monday - Friday, and there is an instructor there to help with any problems, free of charge.

• Development of a holistic approach for the creation, collection, management and diffusion of information and telematics services targeted at the disabled and elderly population, in the context of athletic events
• Utilization digital economy techniques for the diffusion and exploitation of services targeted at the disabled and elderly throughout Europe.
• Development of a web-based pool of information that will allow wide access on seamless and dynamic information regarding accessing and attending athletic events, in compliance with the special needs of the target population.
• Establishment of a distributed network, including travel agents, providers of accommodation services, local, regional and trans-European transportation agents, finance organizations and sport factors. This network will provide access to quality support services for a wide range of disabled users.
• Build a complete e-guide on sport conduct and attendance, based on the universal design principles that will allow the customization of the information delivery and content in strong correlation to each user's needs.