Transforming the social environment by improving people's well-being and support. Faced with a shared objective that moves multiple entities, some break with habitual means and launch themselves to probe new solutions beyond the traditional ones. It is in this context that Social Digital Lab operates, an innovation laboratory for social transformation that seeks in new technologies answers to social challenges such as aging, dependency, and care for children and adolescents.
The initiative explores these solutions and possibilities from a space of more than 1,000 square meters in 22@. Conceived as an environment for experimentation and a test bed for social innovation, the project has repopulated rooms that until recently housed offices of Suara Cooperativa. The entity, specialized in the care and support of people with more than 4,500 workers, opted for teleworking after the pandemic. It was then that the cooperative, with 40 years of experience, decided to convert the space freed up by the 130 employees who worked from the office into this innovation center, recently officially inaugurated.
From this space, the project promotes multiple initiatives aimed at redefining the model of support for people through technological solutions. And it does so in collaboration with the innovative Barcelona ecosystem, working together with universities and startups, in a process in which Suara's own workers, as caregivers and educators, play a fundamental role. Together, they analyze the various areas in which the cooperative works, ranging from childhood to old age, including labor insertion and assisted living for young people, among other areas. This process of collective innovation, in which administrations and users also participate, advances by seeking allies in innovative technologies, such as robotics, virtual reality, and 3D printing.
And what can 3D printing contribute to social challenges? "Precisely that is what we are exploring," explains the director of the Innovation area of Suara Cooperativa, Jordi Picas, to The New Barcelona Post. Before two brand new 3D printers recently received, Picas speculates about the potential applications of this technology in improving the quality of life of the people served by the cooperative: designing totally personalized utensils for people with limited mobility, such as spoons that facilitate their autonomy when eating, is one of the first possibilities that this pioneering center evaluates.
While the applications of 3D printing are still under study, the Social Digital Lab already absorbs the potential of other technologies, such as virtual reality. In the 22@ facilities, there is an immersive room to offer personalized stimuli adapted to the needs of various profiles. These can range from young people with mental health problems to people suffering from cognitive deterioration, whom this technology can transport to unexpected places to work on their intellectual stimulation, even to their childhood home.
Recreating these environments using virtual reality glasses is another line promoted by Social Digital Lab, in collaboration with the startup Oroi. This technology allows bringing virtual reality closer to dependent people who cannot move to immersive rooms, as well as developing projects in countless fields, such as the one the laboratory promotes with the startup V-Tools, aimed at preventing gender violence among high school students.
The cooperative's innovation director explains it alongside Martí Quílez, from the Centre de Vida Independent (CVI). It is an apartment with all its rooms that is located within Suara's facilities. An apartment within an apartment, which recreates a home to promote solutions that allow the elderly and people with special needs to continue residing in their respective homes if they wish. For this purpose, the Associació per la Vida Independent (AVI) has been operating for 15 years, with a multidisciplinary team, and moved this simulated home to Suara's facilities two years ago. To research technology, accessibility, and autonomy, the apartment has all the elements with which a person usually interacts in daily life, ranging from the kitchen to the bathroom and the dining room, starting with the unavoidable entrance door, which by itself can already be a barrier for many.
Thus, the entity aspires to advance with the Social Digital Lab towards future home care, through personalized user studies and specific plans, which may include works to functionally adapt the home and the installation of sensors for various purposes, such as fall detection. The simulated apartment is designed precisely to test these solutions through pilot projects, as well as to promote training and research on how homes should be to facilitate home care. "Internationally, we do not know of any other project that takes technologies applied to care to this level," says Quílez, who recalls that progress is being made towards an increasingly aging population.
Precisely in view of this aging society, the Social Digital Lab promotes projects such as Casal Online, which aims to respond to the unwanted loneliness of people with difficulties leaving their homes. It consists of a device that connects to their television that allows them to remotely connect to workshops and meeting spaces promoted by Suara for four hours daily. "We started a trial with 60 people, and now we have more than 400," Picas details. In addition, the interaction groups using this tool are designed based on the users' place of residence, which facilitates their meeting outside of this project.
Together with l'Associació per la Vida Independent, Social Digital Lab aims to advance towards home care of the futureWith a focus on its workers, the Social Digital Lab has also promoted the Benestarum platform, which offers its employees psychological, physiotherapeutic, and nutritional support, as well as financial advice. This Suara tool has aroused the interest of a dozen companies, and various companies now also offer it to their respective workforces. Additionally, the Social Digital Lab has also promoted the Aliura portal, which encompasses resources for people in situations of dependency and for their families.
In collaboration with universities and startups, the laboratory develops projects in the field of robotics, especially linked to the care of the elderly and dependent people, both at home and in residential centers. Among other initiatives and together with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and startups, it studies the functionalities of a robot in a nursing home. Named Ari and using facial recognition and AI tools, the robot facilitates the work of staff and helps accompany users. It does so in tasks such as exercise practice and contact with family members via video call, among other possibilities aimed at rethinking the accompaniment of people who need it in their daily lives.
To promote this social innovation laboratory, Suara Cooperativa invests part of its surpluses in this area, mainly financing the spaces, personnel, and structure, since a large part of the projects it promotes receive subsidies from public funds. However, the cooperative is exploring new avenues of financing, such as intensifying access to European projects and resorting to alternative financing instruments. In addition, it analyzes the possibility of doing so by collaborating with other organizations and entities, to advance in technology-based social projects that aim to transform society and shape the care sector of the future. And it is that "the social world and technologies were very far apart, until the pandemic demonstrated their usefulness", generating a binomial that the Social Digital Lab wants to exploit by approaching technological innovation from a social perspective.