Chain of Angels is a service that forms a part of the European Presence project. It is a data-base oriented automatic telephone system focussing on older people. The system has 3 services: the Interactive Telephone service and Urgent Messages Service, Free Call and Public Arena.
The Interactive Telephone service and Urgent Messages Service is a telephone service in which older people can participate. Participants are called every day at a specific time to check if they're all right, to ensure social contacts and to organise care. Through the Urgent Messages Service people can contact a professional Helpdesk directly.
The Free Call functionality gives participants the opportunity to make one free call a day, immediately or at a later stage. The Public Arena is a bulletin board where participants leave messages (by phone). The procedure is as follows: the computer starts the Interactive Tele-phone service and calls pairs of participate at the same time, in order to minimise the amount of time for the participants and to ensure that calls take place at the specified time. The par-ticipants generally have one phone conversation per day; 2 persons talk to each other for max. 3 minutes. There's a maximum of 8 participants per group. So there can be a fixed contact per day.
If a problem comes up, the participant can input a request for help, which the computer then matches to the skills and availability of other participants, who are finally contacted about whether they can help. The questions can concern a medical issue ("I need help because I broke my arm", but also "Can anybody drive me to the doctor" and "Can anybody tell me more about Parkinson"?), a hobby, a cultural event ("Who want to go with me to the theatre next Saturday-evening?"), or in case of illness a request if anybody can let out the dog or go to chemist's for instance.
Contact with the Helpdesk is always person-to-person. Where necessary the Helpdesk can provide first-line assistance, but also other questions, and transfer message to people in the circle or region, on the priority list or to professional assistance.
last update 2002-03-18