Within the European week of ICT Occupations and Digital Competence, eSkills week 2012 was organized on under the auspices of the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia and the Croatian Government. At this event, a special attention was paid to elderly people and their understanding of the newly implemented e-services. The demographic trends of ageing population are obvious, not only in Europe but in our country too. Therefore, it is very important to make the elderly population familiar with the ICT technologies and point out the quality of life that they bring.

People, stepping towards their “golden age” full of enthusiasm and desire for new knowledge, have learned from their life experience that ignoring new trends has never been an acceptable option. Therefore, the participants of SOVA forum, at the University for Seniors, gathered with a great interest in a hall of the Open university in Zagreb, to see the presentation that connected the new technologies and services to health, a topic in the focus of the majority of senior citizens.

Darko Gvozdanović, Ericsson Nikola Tesla manager and specialist in the e-Health segment, gave a successful lecture titled “e-Health Impact to Individuals and Society ". The presentation was tailored specially to senior citizens, with education above the average, and having interest for this current topic on health and technology relation. With regard to the participants profile, the decision to dedicate some half an hour to questions from the audience, proved to be a good choice.  Since the company Ericsson Nikola Tesla, was an important participant in the informatization process in Croatian healthcare system, and was a supplier of the Central Healthcare Information System in Croatia, (CEZIH), the proactive participants from the audience put not only questions, but gave quite a number of practical examples and additional suggestion routed even to m-Health segment.

Along with Ericsson Nikola Tesla, the leading technological and socially responsible entrepreneur, focused to raise the awareness of a need to improve computer literacy of the population, the co-organizer of the event was the University for seniors, operating within the Open University in Zagreb. This Open University is an active participant in the EU projects aimed to improve IT skills of elderly citizens in Europe.  During the last decade, this university has, trained to live “life to the fullest” in the contemporary digital society, more than two thousands seniors.

Having in mind that this whole program resulted from the European initiative, one shall mention that more than 65 million European citizens, from more than 35 countries and the Croatia included, participated in the project to improve their computer literacy, in the week from March 26-30.

Company Communications Ericsson Nikola Tesla