The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe's economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: ''The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…''. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the ''digital divide'', which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation.Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them.

Personalised nutrition is a novel public health strategy aiming to promote positive diet and lifestyle changes. Tailored dietary and physical activity advice may be more appropriate than a generalised 'one-size-fits-all' approach as it is more biologically relevant to the individual. Information and computing technology, smartphones and mobile applications have become an integral part of modern life and thereby present the opportunity for novel methods to encourage individuals to lead a healthier lifestyle. This article introduces the European Union-funded PROTEIN project (PeRsOnalised nutriTion for hEalthy livINg) consortium and introduces the associated work packages. The primary objective of the PROTEIN project is to produce a novel adaptable mobile application suite based on sound nutrition and physical activity advice from experts in their field, accessible to all population groups, with differing health outcomes, whose behaviour can be tracked with a variety of sensors and health hazard perception. The mobile application 'ecosystem' that will be developed by the consortium includes a platform, mobile suite, cloud services, artificial intelligence advisor, game suite, modelling of expert's knowledge, users' behaviour data collection, data analysis and a dashboard for healthcare

No abstract

No abstract

Ethical questions about information and communications technologies (ICT) have been debated since World War II. Western democracies have had more than 50 years of experience in addressing and organising the ethical, social and legal aspects (ESLA) of scientific and technological developments. However, this expertise, tradition and experience are not enough to manage the most urgent ethical and social issues and contemporary challenges involving ICT. A systematic and institutional organisation of social values in the context of modern ICT tools is needed. This paper focuses on four major areas: (i) developing a specific approach to ethical issues raised by ICT; (ii) describing in more detail the age-related digital divide in Europe; (iii) identifying technology trends and emerging challenges; and (iv) defining the legal framework for inclusion of senior citizens in the digital society. The paper then concludes with a summary of its key points on the basis of which it makes three proposals as a contribution to efforts aimed at overcoming the exclusion of senior citizens from today's Information Society.