FUNDACION AGEING SOCIAL LAB

Their core work

Ageing Social Lab is a Spanish NGO specialising in the intersection of social science and digital health for older adults. Their core work centres on applying behavioral science, user-centered design, and AI-powered technologies to support independent living and cognitive health in ageing populations. In EU projects they contribute end-user expertise, pilot coordination, and social impact assessment — acting as the "human angle" in technology-heavy consortia focused on smart wearables, cloud health platforms, and connected care. Their work translates research prototypes into real-world deployments tested with actual older adult users.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (REMIND, 2017) was grounded in behavioral science and cognitive prosthetics — a research-oriented effort to understand how people interact with reminding systems in smart home environments. By 2019, with PHArA-ON, the focus expanded dramatically toward large-scale deployment: AI, cloud platforms, big data, smart wearables, and open-call-driven pilot ecosystems. The budget jump from EUR 27,000 to EUR 397,133 reflects this shift from research participation to substantive pilot engagement. The clear direction is away from pure behavioral research and toward applied digital health deployment at scale.

They are evolving from a behavioral research contributor into a deployment-focused partner for AI and IoT health platforms, with growing engagement in standards, privacy, and marketplace ecosystems — making them increasingly relevant for large-scale digital health projects targeting older adult populations.

How they like to work

Ageing Social Lab has participated exclusively as a consortium partner in both projects and has never taken on a coordinator role. Despite this, their 70 unique partners across 19 countries from only 2 projects signals involvement in large, multi-partner consortia — consistent with PHArA-ON's typical scope as a major Innovation Action. They appear to function as a domain specialist that larger technology-led consortia bring in for ageing expertise, end-user access, and social impact perspective rather than technical or administrative leadership.

With 70 unique partners across 19 countries from just 2 projects, their network is strikingly broad for an organisation of this size — a direct reflection of PHArA-ON's large multi-national consortium structure. Their reach is pan-European, with no evidence of a narrow geographic cluster.

What sets them apart

As a dedicated ageing-focused NGO from southern Spain, Ageing Social Lab occupies a niche that technology providers and universities rarely fill: translating research into socially grounded, user-validated outcomes for older adult populations. Their combination of behavioral science roots and hands-on pilot experience in AI and wearables makes them a credible bridge between lab-stage prototypes and real end-user deployment. For consortia needing ethical grounding, older adult user panels, or social impact evidence — particularly for Health and Digital pillar proposals — they offer a profile that few similarly sized Spanish organisations can match.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PHArA-ON
  Their largest project by far at EUR 397,133, this Innovation Action deployed AI, smart wearables, and cloud platforms in real-world pilots for healthy ageing — spanning 19 countries and 70 partners, representing their most significant and complex EU engagement.
• REMIND
  Their entry into H2020 via an MSCA-RISE mobility project on cognitive prosthetics and reminding systems established their behavioral science credentials and initiated their European research network.