Scientific and technological reports

Bridging the Gap?
Access to telecommunciations for all people

3.2 From R&D to Market Products - the TIDE Action
Jan-Ingvar Lindström and Julio Abascal

3.2.1 Introduction

The over all goal with research and development in the field of telematics and disability is to improve the situation for customers with disabilities, be it in a long term or short term view. It applies for methods and systems as well as for software and hardware.

In the late 1980's, a discussion was going on in COST 219 about the possibilities of convincing the European Commission to start a programme on R&D in the field of Information and Communication Technology. The discussion was administered by the then secretary of COST 219, Mr Egidio Ballabio, who succeeded to start a market survey in the field.

3.2.2 The TIDE Initiatives

In 1990, an initiative was taken by the Commission to improve the situation in the field of Information and Communication Technology, the goal of which was to stimulate R&D in the field and thus improve the situation concerning systems and devices for the benefit of disabled customers.

It all started as a Market Survey conducted by 25 European experts, many of them holding previous experience in COST 219 activities. The task was to determine the needs and status of the European market and industry in the field of Assistive Technology. The initiative was called TIDE - Technology Initiative for Disabled and Elderly people.

Three phases were launched, i.e. the TIDE Pilot Action 1992-93, the TIDE Bridge Phase 1993-1994 and the Telematics Application Programme - also called the TIDE Main Phase 1995-1998. Some projects were prolonged and run the whole or part of what was called the running phase. An overview of the three phases is shown in sub-chapter 3.2.7.

In order to acquire knowledge about the outcome of the projects and find out about the efficiency of money spent, the TIDE Pilot Action and the TIDE Bridge Phase were evaluated in 1994 and 1999. Below is a short description of the prerequisites and the outcome.

3.2.3 The TIDE Pilot Action

Background of the Pilot Action

The first phase of TIDE was called Pilot Action because it was intended to demonstrate the viability of a research and development programme in the Assistive Technology field. A call for participation was issued in 1991. From the 70 proposals submitted, 21 were funded for a total amount of 18 million Euros (from the 1991-1992 budget). They started at the beginning of 1992 and they lasted, on average, 18 months. The background of the call was concern about the high level of fragmentation on the supply side in rehabilitation and Assistive Technology and the many different approaches to the management and provision of support at national level within the community. At the end of the Pilot Action a programme extension was founded with 3.9 M Euros, to complete in the course of 1994/95. This allowed half of the projects to continue work on further validation of early developments(9). A call for a major horizontal study of the rehabilitation market was also issued. Out of ten proposals received, one proposal was accepted for funding, to be completed by the end of 1994.

(9) The book "High TIDE" edited by J. Slater, contains complete descriptions of the TIDE Pilot phase projects [Slater-98].

The 21 projects(10) were grouped in 5 main areas:

They covered four technical areas suggested by the expert studies carried out before the call:

The Evaluation of the Pilot Action

The evaluation covered the original objectives of the TIDE Initiative as a whole, focused on the specific objectives of the Pilot Action:

(10) The synopses of the founded projects can be found in [Synop-93]
(11) In the case of the Pilot Action, effort was focused on establishing networks of collaborative research and development to create awareness of the rehabilitation technology market.

The Full Report [PilotFR-94] and The Summary and Recommendations [PilotSR-94], summarise the conclusions of the Evaluation Committee with the endorsement of the Evaluation Board.

Conclusions of the Pilot Phase Evaluation

With relation to the consolidation of a research and development framework, the establishment of a strong community of TIDE programme participants was detected, demonstrating the benefits of Europe wide contact, co-ordination and collaboration. The diffusion of advanced techniques, technologies and applications from countries, application fields or technologies of higher experience to those of lower experience was highly appreciated.

The analysis of the user involvement showed that further improvement could be achieved in this field, particularly through greater consultation and involvement in the earlier definition and design stages. In addition the employed methodologies for user evaluation were considered insufficient. On the other hand, even if a very small number of projects showed little or no real commitment to user involvement, the most successful projects had the enthusiastic and active involvement of established formal user organisations in the design and implementation.

From examination of project deliverables, a wide spectrum of technology innovation at many levels was found: creation of new technologies, development of new methods of applying existing technology to create new products, identification of new applications or adaptations, etc. Nevertheless, in a small number of cases "reinvention of the wheel" or, on the contrary, unrealistically speculative objectives were found.

Few but encouraging examples of a significant contribution to standardisation were detected, due to the fact that this effort was only possible for large companies in near market projects.

The viability of exploitation results was questioned whether exploitation could realistically be achieved in the short term, given the nature of the projects and the fragmentation of the market. Nevertheless, the formation of new companies, technology transfer and exploitation agreements was acknowledged as part of the exploitation efforts. On the other hand, many projects planned from the outset to develop demonstrators and pilots. There was a very significant additional investment required to transform the successful ones into commercial reality. Nevertheless, there were some outstanding examples of success in the first stages of public introduction of services and products. It was notable that frequently the market success was related to products that were useful for a population not limited to disabled and older people. In addition, a key aspect of the success was the presence in the consortium of enterprises that had the resources and capability to market the product or service. It is also remarkable that many projects modified their direction and emphasis and produced impressive results that were not part of the original plan.

The evaluation Committee noted that only technical standards had been considered in project reviews and recommended that safety, personal security, privacy, self-determination etc, i.e. ethical and human rights issues to be considered in future calls as well.

The programme management and support was highly appreciated. In fact, this and the quality of collaboration across technical and national boundaries were seen as one of the most positive aspects of the Pilot Action.

Recommendations by the Evaluation Committee

The danger that TIDE could be considered the only context in which the needs of elderly and disabled users would be addressed, led the evaluators to propose to enhance the links with other programmes through concerted action, joint seminars and workshops, etc.. From today's perspective we can confirm that this policy produced a cross fertilisation between programmes leading to the inclusion of user needs as a key objective. Research in Assistive Technology profited also the input from other technological and social programmes.

It was also proposed to give priority to projects that clearly include users' issues into the proposal, allocating enough effort and budget, and ensuring the technical skills required to design, implement and analyse the results of users' tests and field trials. It also strongly recommended to include, as one of the objectives of concerted and horizontal actions, to establish and publish guidelines and good practice in user evaluation and testing, making skilled resources available to individual projects.

It was suggested to create a permanent liaison with the Committee for European Normalisation to ensure appropriate information and recommendations flow between projects in the standardisation process. Some technical support action was also needed in this area to increase the awareness of current progress in specific standard initiatives among the individual projects. On the other hand, it was stressed that not only technical standards must be considered in projects, but also the ethical and human rights issue (safety, personal security, privacy, self-determination, etc.).

Also emphasised, was the sharing of practical experience and knowledge gained by partners of TIDE projects to the entire community, making easily accessible public deliverables from a centralised "TIDE Information Unit", organising workshops in the rehabilitation engineering field and seminars on methods and tools for designers working in Assistive Technology to enhance the knowledge transference.

To avoid failure to deliver the promised exploitation (that could be associated with unrealistic expectations and lack of expertise) specific horizontal measures to provide consultancy, advice and training to TIDE projects on the commercial and marketing aspects of exploitation in this particular market were suggested.

Regarding the selection and negotiation of projects, a more careful consideration to the time and expertise made available for undertaking the assessment and selection of proposals was recommended. It was also said that the Commission negotiators should have clear guidelines on possible changes in the scope of the projects in response to changes of budget. These options should be defined by the panel of experts as part of the assessment of the proposals. It could be helpful to include the reviewers as observers into de final stages of negotiation of a Technical Annex.

The Evaluation Board assessment

For its part, the Evaluation Board underlined that "particular attention was paid to the evaluation of complex ethical and methodological issues which make user involvement in TIDE both essential and challenging". It concluded that "TIDE must remain at the intersection of information, communications, bio-medical and control technologies". In relation to dissemination and exploitation results the Evaluation Board emphasised "the influence which TIDE much exercise on the product definition and design for industry at large. This reinforces the recommendation that TIDE must direct its messages and influence outwards as well as within the rehabilitation sector", and pushed the promotion of the concept of "Design for all".

The Evaluation Board's overall conclusion of the evaluation is that the Pilot Action was remarkably successful in the mobilisation and co-ordination of diverse group organisations and workers across the Community. The investment made in the Pilot Action was judged extremely worthwhile, especially considering the relatively modest resources and the short time frame in which it operated. The Evaluation Board also thought that the management and organisational aspects of the programme required further refinement.

Perspective of Pilot Action from the year 2001

Most of the recommendations made by the Evaluation Committee to the TIDE Office were taken into account. For instance, the suggestion of carrying out some activities to inform the possible project submitters about the state of the art in the field, the previous developments reached by TIDE projects and about the most adequate methodologies to manage a project, was implemented as a set of seven seminars about different topics. People who had submitted projects that were considered as interesting by the evaluators, but for different reasons were not funded, were invited to these seminars.

The evaluation was carried out shortly after the completion of the projects and, therefore, there was not time enough to analyse an impact on the market. Nevertheless, the reviewers found that, even if at that time the amount of devices and services in the market as a direct result from funded projects was not relevant, the impact in the European market was considerable because the rising of the awareness of the stakeholders (mainly SMEs, research institutions and user associations). The first TIDE Congress, held in Brussels in spring 1993, contributed greatly to the spreading of the results and was a good occasion to demonstrate the provisional results of most of the Pilot Phase projects. The debate panels were also a useful opportunity for an interesting exchange of opinions and experience amongst people working in the rehabilitation technology field. The attendance of people not involved in TIDE projects and others coming from the outside of the European Union were very rewarding. TIDE Congress has had an important role in the diffusion of Assistive Technology R&D results in Europe including advancements in the RT market, user needs assessment, evaluation of results, project management, national policies, legal and ethical aspects, etc.

3.2.4 The TIDE Bridge Phase

Background conditions

The TIDE Bridge Phase started in the middle of 1993 and included 55 technology promotion and application projects in six application areas, viz:

1. Access to technology and related services
2. Life at home and remote care
3. Mobility and transport
4. Control and manipulation
5. Restoration and enhancement of function
6. User and market issues

The average duration of each project was 18 months, but projects were in progress until 1998. The total costs of the projects were about 72 M Euros and the total EU funding was about 38 M Euros.

The outputs of each of the projects (reports, prototype systems, technical demonstrators, products and services, information materials and dissemination activities) were registered and analysed. Additional information concerning horizontal activities (networking, standardisation activities and workshops) and broader dissemination of the results was also included in the evaluation.

Particular attention was also paid to the five principles to which the project work should conform:

The evaluation of the TIDE Bridge Phase was different compared with the TIDE Pilot Action in several aspects. A significant one was that the TIDE Pilot Action evaluation took place already in 1994, i.e. shortly after the projects were formally closed. The TIDE Bridge Phase evaluation, however, did not take place until five years after the formal closing of the project time. That gave an interesting opportunity to find out about the results of the projects several years after their formal closing down.

What was found?

The evaluation showed that there were wide variations in the output of the projects and the degree to which the projects had conformed to the five principles. There were also great differences between the six application areas in the overall success of their achievements in terms of exploitation and market take-up.

The six application areas

For the application areas, the access to technology and related services showed that the research had been innovative and multi-disciplinary in its approach, but that in some areas too little emphasis was placed on training the user in using the new technologies. - Success for Life at home and remote care was mainly found in projects where solutions sought to interface special security products with mainstream home systems. Regrettably, little progress was made on standardisation issues, and ethical problems were less considered than expected. - Results from the Mobility and transport projects turned out to be of interest not least to the general public. They showed in general a high level of technology and innovation, good user involvement and in some cases excellent market communication. - The Control and manipulation area aimed at extending the functionality associated with the use of home systems technologies for the benefit of people with disabilities. The projects were characterised by leading edge technology and innovation. They performed very well and included the users appropriately. The market communication was excellent. A high degree of success was achieved by concentrating on the use of existing technology in integrated systems rather than developing highly innovative technologies. - The Restoration and enhancement of function application area was composed of eighteen projects covering a wide area of projects. In general, the levels of technology and innovation as well as of performance and user involvement were very high. Market communication was good, but standardisation efforts and ethical considerations left some question marks. - The area Users and market issues, finally, was composed of fairly successful "horizontal" activities. The work was largely explorative in nature, and included e.g. the collation of knowledge concerning user needs, the development of a method for evaluation of the cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness of assistive technologies and the encouragement of innovation, awareness raising and information dissemination activities.

The Council Decision Objectives

The evaluation had to comply with Council Decision of 21 September 1993 on a Community technology initiative for disabled and elderly people (TIDE) (1993 to 1994) (93/12/EEC) objectives. These were:

Stimulation of the European rehabilitation technology market should involve greater co-operation among many and various actors in the rehabilitation technology sector, including user organisations, major industry, small/medium-sized enterprises, providers of technical aids, service providers etc. The evaluation showed that the TIDE Bridge phase action had successfully reached its goals, but the Assistive Technology market had not become a truly European market during its lifetime. It had, however, contributed to a greater knowledge about the market.

The socio-economic integration of disabled and elderly people was central to the agenda of the TIDE Bridge phase initiative. Emphasis was placed on the needs to incorporate projects' technical results in the industry and consumer standards of Europe. However, no specific indicators were given in the Council Decision for the measurement of the expected impacts. Yet the project were estimated as having given direct benefits to the target groups by giving access to information and communications, systems for easing life at home and providing remote services e.g. via social alarms etc. In the area of employment, however, very little concrete advancement was shown. The greatest impact of the TIDE Bridge phase in terms of socio-economic integration have been in extending ordinary people's perception of what can be possible for disabled and elderly people when new technologies are available.

In the Council decision, meeting the detailed objectives of the work plan specifies the work of multi-disciplinary teams, i.e. participation from user organisations and similar, industrial partners, research institutes and universities. Distribution:

Partner type	Numbers
User organisations and similar	93
Industrial partners	137
Universities	94
Research institutes	43

Responding to the needs of the user groups was one of the most important criteria of the initiative. As shown above, quite a number of "users" were involved. It should be noted, however, that the concept includes:

Overall, the participation was stronger in the Bridge phase than in the Pilot phase. However, some failures in demonstrations and trials of a few projects showed that user involvement should have been addressed earlier in these projects.

New applications for rehabilitation technology evolve partially out of technology and innovation, but here they are characterised by strong social components and networking. It requires a very close interaction between technology and service providers. In addition to integration of existing technologies in new products and services, some projects sought to develop new applications of rehabilitation technology.

Innovation and technology transfer were targeted as a means of improving the utility and usability of products, for example by miniaturisation and automation and by adapting and integrating mainstream information and communication technology hardware in new applications. - In the TIDE Bridge phase the most effective technology outcomes occurred through innovative applications of existing technology.

In the rehabilitation field there is usually a slow take up of new ideas. The need to accommodate medical ethics provisions, the lack of integration of the market and the broad range of disciplines involved in provision of care, all contribute to making technology transfer particularly difficult.

Two remarks: given the difficulty as mentioned, it's important that even failures are communicated to the market. Learning from failure is an important part of any research process! - Without extensive use of trials a successful marketing strategy is less likely. In the TIDE Bridge phase only a few projects fulfilled this criterion.

Take up and dissemination of standards is a continuing challenge in the rehabilitation sector. The TIDE Bridge phase projects were supposed to help accelerating the development of technical norms and standards in a number of areas. This took place only to a very limited extent.

Ethical aspects of the projects had been emphasised already during the TIDE Pilot phase, and was also addressed in some of the Bridge phase projects, albeit not in a systematic way.

Developments from the Pilot phase to the Bridge phase

In Table 3-7 below, some areas of interest in the Pilot action and Bridge phase are compared.

Table 3-7. Tide Pilot action and Bridge phase overview development (* The asterisked figure identifies the year in which the last of the funded projects were completed).

Disseminating and exploitation of results

The TIDE Bridge phase was a pre-normative and pre-competitive initiative, i.e. it was not to be expected that within the time frame of any individual project the results would be for sale on the market. Nevertheless, dissemination and exploitation of results was an important task to be evaluated. At the conclusion of the contract period the main achievement had been the production of reports.

Beside the reports, media presentation had taken place in the form of a number of presentations at conferences, 18 radio or television broadcasts and 40 magazine or newspaper articles and 42 broadcast quality video recordings for the benefit of marketing activities. Also, at least 20 consortia had presented themselves on websites and most of them participated in the second TIDE Congress in 1995.

An example is the SATURN project, the intention of which was to deliver knowledge about smart cards and accessible terminals for people with disabilities at the closure of the project. It did so in terms of pamphlets with instructions, standardisation work, marketing video and participation in the TIDE Congress in 1995.

Figure 3-3. TIDE SATURN instruction pamphlet

Success rate

Fifty-five projects were awarded contracts in the Bridge phase. These included the 21 that had been very strongly recommended in the project assessment process, and 24 that had been strongly recommended. It also included a further ten projects about which the reviewers had had some reservations.

It was found that the very strongly recommended projects had good technology outcomes except for one or two, and did far better than the remaining category, although there were a few good ones even there. Also, those projects that implemented novel applications of established technology in the main achieved their objectives more successfully than those that sought direct innovation as the primary goal of the project.

Five years later

As mentioned, the late evaluation gave an excellent opportunity to compare the outcome at the closure of the project with the situation five years later.

Not surprisingly, very few if any of the projects had resulted in a product, available on the market at the end of the project time. This does not mean that the projects have failed, just that the result of the project had not been implemented.

Under these prerequisites it was, however, very encouraging to find that about twenty consortia had continued their collaboration (during the running phase) and ten of them in such a way, that products had appeared on the market - let alone that they were in general not very widely spread.

3.2.5 Conclusions and Recommendations

Building on the momentum of the TIDE Pilot action, the TIDE Bridge phase was a technology initiative that, like its predecessor, was successful as a co-ordinated action, bringing together a diverse group of organisations, workers and users throughout the European Community. It was also successful in the sense that the majority of projects fulfilled their obligations and promises.

The frustration about lack of market penetration should be balanced as follows:

Firstly, it's unrealistic to believe that any project can go from idea or innovation to market presence in eighteen months. A period of at least five years is needed for such a development. This was clearly demonstrated by the outcome by the consortia that continued after the formal closure of the projects.

Secondly, appearance on the mass market requires a good balance between the capacity of suppliers and buyers. This is a bottleneck in the rehabilitation technology system, where often products become very expensive because of small series etc. at the same time as they address a group of customers who want but cannot afford the products.

This led to a number of recommendations. First of all it was recommended that the European Union should continue to support a broad and integrated range of measures addressing the target group, to see that prerequisites for convincing and well-funded research and technical development activities are available and that a strong European Union social policy framework is available allowing the take up of results.

Specifically, recommendations associated with the five principles were, related to:

User focused principle:

Market oriented principle:

Innovation and technical adaptation principle:

Multi-disciplinary approaches principle:

Technology verification principle:

In essence, the TIDE Bridge phase evaluation showed that, contrary to some rumours, the outcome of the Bridge phase was considered to have been rather successful. Most impressive was the finding of continuing collaborations within many of the consortia founded at the start of the action, and that many of them had succeeded to acquire other financial resources and thus reached the market with products.

3.2.6 References

BALLABIO, E., MORAN, R. "Older people and People with disabilities in the information Society. And RTD Approach for the European Union". European Commission. DGXIII.

EC, COM, (2000). "Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. An evaluation of the Bridge Phase of TIDE (Technology Initiative for Disabled and Elderly people)" Commission of the European Communities, COM(2000) 727 final, 17.11.2000. [May be downloaded from: cordis.lu/ist/ka1/special_needs/library.htm

PilotFR, (1994). Evaluation Board and Committee. "An evaluation of the Pilot Action of TIDE. 1992-1994. Full Report". European Commission. DG XIII. September 1994. ISBN 92-827-4162-1.

PilotSR, (1994). Evaluation Board and Committee. "An evaluation of the Pilot Action of TIDE. 1992-1994. Summary and Recommendations". European Commission. DG XIII. September 1994. ISBN 92-827-4161-3.

SLATER, J. (Ed.), (1998)."High Tide. A review of the results of the pilot phase of the TIDE projects from 1991 to 1994". European Commission. 1998. ISBN 92-828-3074-8.

TIDE Synopses (1993). "Pilot Action Synopses". CEC DG XIII EUR 15023En. March 1993. ISBN 92-826-5705-1.

TIDE (2000). An Evaluation of the Bridge phase of Tide. Communication of the Commission and Report. CEC, COM(2000) 727 Final.

3.2.7 ANNEX 1. Overview of Pilot-, Bridge Phase and Telematics Applications Programme Activities

The official dates of the TIDE Pilot action, Bridge phase, and the relevant part of the Telematics Applications Programme activities were:

The diagram below indicates the periods during which projects were in progress under the respective phases of TIDE and the Telematics Applications Programme.

Table 3-8. Periods during which projects were in progress

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