During the technological event, which took place from February 4 to 7, it met with ten companies and this week it plans to meet with seven more virtually.
The Social Digital Lab, the social innovation laboratory of Suara Cooperativa, has presented a challenge on aging in the ACCIÓ Open Challenge at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) fair. This consists of developing a Digital Twins technology, which allows analyzing the data available to Suara Cooperativa to recreate different future scenarios. Initially, the aim is to use this technology to improve care services for the elderly; while, later, it is planned to replicate it in other resources oriented to different life cycles.
“It is a simulation of scenarios where we can taste and understand what would happen if I do this or that in a Metaverse without interfering in real life”, explains Bàrbara Outeiro, head of Open Innovation at Suara Cooperativa, who adds: “It would be to incorporate the philosophy of prevention into operations. Before incorporating piloting, prototyping and making projects, really understand if it will have a place”.
Digital twins, called digital twins in English, are a set of processing tools capable of analyzing large amounts of information while replicating all this activity in a virtual environment to predict the operation of machinery and processes. In addition, digital twins allow us to anticipate responses to potential errors and problems. Until now, it has been used much more in fields such as engineering, industry and urban planning, but Suara Cooperativa is promoting its use for the first time in accompanying people.
To respond to this challenge, the innovation team met during ISE, which took place from 4 to 7 February, with a dozen companies from the technology world, while this week it plans to hold seven more meetings within the framework of the online ISE.
One of the entities that met face-to-face with Suara Cooperativa was i2Cat Foundation. “Since Suara is an organization dedicated to the field of social care and we are a multi-technology research center, we think it makes perfect sense for us to ally ourselves to generate all this joint technology”, specifies Robert Cornfield, Head of Industry 5.0 - Innovation Business of i2CatFoundation.
Exploring new technological solutions
The ISE, which is now in its 21st edition and the fifth in Barcelona, is the global reference congress for the audiovisual sector and integrated systems. This year it has achieved record numbers, which reaffirm that it is consolidating itself among the major technological events of the moment. It has obtained an attendance of nearly 88,000 people, 20% more than in 2024, who have been able to visit 1,605 exhibitors, 330 of them new, spread over an area of 92,000 m2, 20% more than in 2024.
Therefore, Suara Cooperativa not only threw itself into this challenge, but the Social Digital Lab team explored different technological solutions for other challenges such as health, well-being or education, especially for people in vulnerable situations.
“Scouting involves interviews and also walking around the different stands to explore a little bit of the new technologies they are offering in each case,” argues Clara Garcia Blanch, head of Pilot Tests at Suara Cooperativa, who concludes: “For us, it has been very important to be here and to have a table on care and the future needs of aging within the framework of a Congress like this.”
