On May 12th, the SHAPES Consortium hosted the first Dialogue Workshop of the European SHAPES project, organised by the Palacký University in the Czech Republic. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Workshop was fully conducted in a virtual format, using video recording, presentation and a videoconference platform for the dialogue and the collaborative work sessions.
Under the sign of the Validation of the innovative SHAPES Concept, the Workshop gathered EDGE and the SHAPES partners with dozens of representatives from academia, non-governmental organisations and similar projects, healthcare and social care professionals, and managers of public and private care service providers. The first part of the Workshop was marked by the screening of five videos that presented the SHAPES project and its primary goals, the SHAPES Platform’s ethical framework, the SHAPES personas and use cases, the SHAPES partners’ efforts to create a think-tank to discuss integrated care of older individuals in Europe and futuristic exercises about the dynamics, the trends and the innovation that will influence the SHAPES Platform and the health and social care in the XXI century.
The second part of the Workshop was dedicated to four sessions of discussion and work on the presented themes. The four sessions were conducted in parallel with four participating groups travelling through the various themes and presenting their ideas and insights that, gathered from the moderators, will now enrich SHAPES’s knowledge base and contribute to the work being developed in the next four years. Leveraged by a three-month dedicated awareness campaign, organised by AGE Platform, that supported the process of preparing, executing and evaluating the event, the First SHAPES Workshop greatly exceeded initial expectations and revealed itself as an important asset in the construction of a community of dialogue and action about the integrate care of older individuals in Europe.