The Steering Group of the pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing reached an agreement to design an implementation plan towards the following objective: to ensure that the average European citizen has two more active and healthy years to live by 2020. The plan focuses on three main areas of life events: prevention, care and cure, and independent living.

The Steering Group of the pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing agreed at its latest meeting to carry out five specific actions in order to ensure that the average European citizen has two more active and healthy years to live by 2020. This Pilot Group was launched in July 2011. The actions are part of an implementation plan which focuses on three main areas of life events: prevention, care and cure, and independent living. The five actions are ready to be launched next year and they comprise innovative ways to ensure patients follow their prescriptions – a concerted action in at least 30 European regions; co-operation to help prevent functional decline and frailty, with a particular focus on malnutrition; spread and promote successful innovative integrated care models for chronic diseases amongst older patients, such as through remote monitoring. Action should be taken in a number of the EU’s regions; and improve the uptake of interoperable ICT independent living solutions through global standards to help older people stay independent, mobile and active for longer.

This first set of five actions will work as "pathfinders" to implement the European Innovation Partnership's vision. According to the Commission, in a longer term perspective, the first group of actions will be complemented with new actions in line with priorities such as health literacy, patient empowerment, personalised health management, prevention and early diagnosis of functional and cognitive decline, and extending active and independent living through open and personalised solutions.

In order to implement the action plan agreed by the Steering Group, the European Commission will work closely with national governments and a wide range of stakeholders. In 2012, it will launch calls for involvement of stakeholders beyond those that participated in the Steering Group to implement together the priorities and actions identified in the Strategic Implementation Plan.