This paper introduces the ADVENT project that focuses on providing a comfortable, safe and secure environment, supporting daily living of elders, while empowering their mobility and independency. We present a generic system architecture that emerged from user and system requirements analysis (ADVENT is currently in the beginning of its design phase), which consists of four parts: i) the home monitoring environment, ii) the mobile personal monitoring and support, iii) the service deployment platform and iv) the communication infrastructure. These system parts are further described and several implications, considerations and challenging issues from the ADVENT perspective are discussed. In addition, some design and development directions that will be carefully examined and thoroughly evaluated in the next phases of the project are highlighted.