History/Previous meetings
At the time of the Systems Science in Health Care conference held in Montreal, Canada in 1980, the idea of a more specialised conference focused on long-term care and services for elderly and disabled people was suggested and supported. As a result, the first SYSTED conference was held in 1983, also in Montreal. This conference had around 600 participants representing a total of 19 countries. Subsequently a further six SYSTED conferences were held in different countries during 1983-1999, the locations being: Australia (Perth), Italy (Bologna), Spain (Barcelona), Switzerland (Geneva), USA (Chicago ) and France (Grenoble). The chairperson during this period was Professor Charles Tilquin (University of Montreal) and key committee members, still actively involved (see below), included Professors Duncan Boldy (Australia) and Len Heumann (USA).
Following the 1999 conference in Grenoble, it has proved difficult to organise relatively large interdisciplinary international conferences such as SYSTED, no doubt because of competing mainly single discipline events and more limited finances for conference attendance. Hence the idea of refocusing and promoting the SYSTED concept through smaller scale activities (workshop(s), session(s)), either held independently or linked to a more regional, rather than international, event.
The first such ’reborn’ SYSTED event took place in Japan (Tokyo) in 2011, organised by Professor Tokie Anme (University of Tsukuba). This was labelled as ‘SYSTED 11’ to indicate the year in which it was held, in line with previous practice. This was mainly a Japanese event, with a small number of international participants and a number of invited international speakers, mainly from the new SYSTED Steering Committee.
Tokie Anme, Mary McCall, Duncan Boldy, Holger Stolarz, Magnus Jegermalm and Cecilia Henning participated in two symposia at the 11th Global Conference on Ageing (Ageing Connects) in Prague, Czech Republic, 28 May-1 June 2012. The Themes of the two symposia were International Perspectives on Integrated Communities for Aging from Europe, Japan and Israel and The Role of Volunteering, Civil Society and Social Integration for the Well-being of Older Persons: International Perspectives.
A Work Shop was organized at the School of Health Sciences, Jönköping University, Sweden, on the 12 th of June 2013 on the theme Aging in Place in the Community. Contributions were presented by Tokie Anme, Mary McCall, Duncan Boldy, Holger Stolarz, Magnus Jegermalm, Kerstin Kärnekull (from the ISA network) and Cecilia Henning.
We held a SYSTED activity in association with the 23rd Nordic Congress of Gerontology to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, 25-28 May 2014. In keeping with tradition, as SYSTED 14.
Also SYSTED 17 in Mannheim, SYSTED18 in International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics 2017 in San Francisco, and SYSTED19 in Mannheim.
We will have SYSTED2020 in Mongolia, 8-11 September, 2020.
