Success of the first French E-lab Summer School on ‘Services marketing for the elderly’

UGA and UPMC co-organised the first EIT Health E-Lab Summer School linked to the growing market of the silver economy.

The elderly represents more than 16 million people in France, approximately 25% of the population, and it is a blooming market. Student entrepreneurs from UPMC, UGA and other EIT Health partners were eager to learn more. Our first edition of the Summer School “Services marketing for the elderly”, which took place from 8-5 September 2017 in a beautiful location near the Alps in excellent company was a success.
The 12 participants benefited from master classes by Christophe Brissonneau and Lucas Perez, both expert consultants of the Silver Economy who are convinced that we have to help our society change to face an aging population with new solutions.

« To know elderly people, there is only one solution: you have to go and speak with them directly, listen to them with an open mind» said Alexandre Duclos, a sociologist from MADOPA, a charity aiming at evaluating what can bring new technologies to help the elderly stay autonomous for as long as possible. Yannick Fouquet from TASDA, a charity based in Grenoble which promotes the use of technology to help people stay at home, presented the last technologies on the market to prevent falls, to connect people together, or even to call for help when needed. Françoise Pettelat and Denis Massard, from the charity Esenior, brought their knowledge of retired people who come to be trained to use new technologies whereas Julien Cartier shared with everyone how he tried to coach innovating companies in the silver economy market and the limits he faced. Everyone agreed that there are still a lot of things to do to help entrepreneurs develop their project in this specific market.

In between the master classes, networking activities were proposed and every participant had the opportunity to work on their own project during the workshops with some of the speakers. They even finished with some roping swinging on a sunny day, enjoying their time in the mountains.

See you all at the next EIT Health event.