16 November 2007

IBM, Universities Collaborate On Technologies for the Aging Workforce

The University of Dundee has formed a collaboration with IBM and the University of Miami to develop new software technology tools to accommodate the needs of older workers and help them adapt to and remain productive in the changing workplace of the 21st century.

Workforces in developed countries are ageing and the available pool of younger workers is shrinking at a fast rate. High percentages of skilled workers are approaching or reaching retirement age by the end of the decade. And as these workers retire, they take with them valuable skills, experience, training and knowledge.

As this trend continues, companies can use this opportunity to innovate-and even gain competitive advantage-by ensuring skilled older workers have the tools they need to be effective and by offering advantages to promote retention. One way to support maturing workers who have age-related disabilities is to find new ways to increase their comfort level and ability to use technology.

For many organizations, the answer is accessibility - the development and integration of structures, systems, tools, and processes that facilitate the inclusion of more people - irrespective of their age, abilities or personal challenges.

The collaboration between the School of Computing at Dundee, IBM and the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami will focus on issues related to training and worker communication, especially in environments where there is a multigenerational workforce.

"IBM strives to aid companies in developing solutions to accommodate the maturing workforce, as well as prolong and increase productivity", said Vicki Hanson, Manager, Accessibility Research for IBM and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Dundee.

The aim is to develop `open source’ software tools that can be shared easily among developers and the people who need them most.

"This collaboration is a superb opportunity for our group in Dundee to apply our wide experience of research with older people, and of developing better ways of accessing technology, in an exciting new transatlantic partnership with IBM and the Miller Medical School in Miami," said Professor Peter Gregor, Head of the School of Computing at the University of Dundee.

"The open source focus makes the challenges particularly rewarding because it means that knowledge gained and systems developed will be available freely to the people who need them and to other developers."

The collaboration team is comprised of researchers from the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Professor Gregor and colleagues at the University of Dundee, and Professor Sara Czaja from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The project will target both training and collaboration technologies, with an eye to the unique needs of older workers.

The IBM Research team, lead by Dr Hanson, has worked for the past several years on website usability for older adults. Through Corporate Citizenship partnerships with key organizations serving older adults, the IBM researchers have created software deployed worldwide that addresses many needs of older users. (For more information on the available solutions, please visit: www3.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/research.html)

At the University of Dundee, within the Assistive and Healthcare Technologies Group, there are eight faculty, including three full Professors and Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow, Dr Anna Dickinson, who have a focus on older people and assistive technologies. The university take a multidisciplinary approach to the problem with researchers not only from the School of Computing, but also from Psychology, and from the Schools of Media Arts & Imaging and Design in producing visualizations and interaction scenarios.

At the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the collaboration will build on research conducted at The Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) and the Center on Aging. CREATE is a multidisciplinary, cohesive Center of research and education on aging and technology funded by the National Institutes on Aging. The team at Miami, led by Dr. Sara Czaja involves researchers from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Industrial Engineering and the Center on Aging. An emphasis of the research program at Miami is on technology in work/employment settings.

"Older workers represent an extremely valuable resource," said Professor Czaja. "However they need to have tools available to them to be able to compete in today’s technology-driven workplace. We are excited about the opportunity to collaborate with IBM and Dundee as it provides us with a unique opportunity to have the results of our research efforts translated into actual products and tools. It also provides a wonderful opportunity for our students."

NOTES TO EDITORS

About IBM
The work is part of IBM’s Open Collaborative Research (OCR) program - an initiative designed to foster research connections between IBM and universities. OCR projects are designed to focus on topics that are deemed especially important or difficult and where open collaboration would benefit the academic and industrial research partners involved and the world at large.

By design, the IBM OCR program accelerates the innovation and development of open software across a breadth of areas, thus enabling the development of related industry standards and greater interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a manner that enhances these goals.

Under IBM’s OCR program, results developed between IBM Research and top university faculty and their students for specific projects will be made available as open source software code and all additional intellectual property developed based on those results will be openly published or made available royalty-free.

To remain competitive, businesses and governments worldwide must evolve and adapt by creating strategies that maximize the potential of every worker, regardless of their age or physical abilities. IBM believes that accessibility can play a critical role in helping companies maximize the skills and knowledge of maturing employees, while creating a meaningful connection to younger generations of workers.

For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com.

For more information about IBM’s Open Collaboration Program, please visit XX

Press contact:
Steven Tomasco, IBM Media Relations, 914.945.1655, stomasc@us.ibm.com

UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE & THE OCR PROJECT

Dundee's role in the project
We will develop a series of software tools specifically designed to improve the ability of older people to continue to continue to take part fully in employment and make a unique contribution to the workforce. The development process will rely on substantial user involvement throughout along with support from our partners in Miami and at IBM.

Relevant work already done at Dundee in this area
We have developed software tools for people with cognitive difficulties to improve communication and allow better access to information, simplified interfaces for training purposes for older first-time computer users, and explored innovative techniques for requirements gathering about the use of technology by older people.

Advantage of working with IBM
Working with IBM will assist in the immediate transfer of our ideas to those who can benefit from them, particularly with the open source approach. It will also provide us with access to the thinking and innovative ideas of people working within IBM. IBM has also brought us together with expertise from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

For media enquiries contact:
Anna Day
Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: a.c.day@dundee.ac.uk