General description ICT4Life is a three-year project funded under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, with the ambition of providing new services for integrated care employing user-friendly ICT tools, thereby ultimately increasing patients’ quality of life and autonomy at home. To reach this goal, ICT4Life is conducting breakthrough research and radical innovation and will implement the ICT4Life platform. Such a platform will deliver a series of innovative services to patients affected by Parkinson’ s, Alzheimer’ s and other dementias and also to health professionals and formal and informal care-givers. All solutions are developed following a user-centred methodology and tested in real-life scenarios.
This initiative brings together nine partners representing academia, industry and end-user groups, all committed to improving patients’ lives and advancing Europe’ s leadership role in personalised services for integrated care.
The partners of this well-balanced and multidisciplinary consortium are:
• Artica Telemedicina( Spain), which leads the project;
• Polytechnic University of Madrid( Spain);
• Madrid Parkinson’ s Association( Spain);
• Netis Informatics Ltd( Hungary);
• E-seniors( France);
• CERTH – Centre for Research and Technology
Hellas( Greece);
• Maastricht University( Netherlands);
• HOPE – The European Hospital and Healthcare Federation( Belgium);
European health systems are moving away from the‘ treat and cure of acute conditions’ culture to face the challenges of an ageing demographic
9 HHE 2018 | hospitalhealthcare. com
• University of Pécs( Hungary).
The motivation behind ICT4Life comes from the need to find solutions aimed at developing the concepts of self-care, active patients and integrated care. To reach this goal, ICT4Life is developing, through technological, medical and social research, a radically new approach to integrated care that is being materialised in the ICT4Life platform.
People with Parkinson’ s, Alzheimer’ s and other dementias strive for independence, although they face major difficulties in their daily lives, especially in taking care of themselves. Caregivers also need to be supported in their daily care routines. As the impairment increases, families need to dedicate increased time and mental and physical efforts to their relatives. Health professionals require tools ensuring a better coordination of care which, in turn, guarantee more efficient decision-making processes regarding therapies.
This situation poses a challenge for public authorities, policy makers and businesses, especially as it comes at a time of increasing pressure on public budgets and growing demands from older people for care products and services. If this demographic transition is not tackled head-on, it will raise considerable concerns for the sustainability of health systems.
The ICT4Life platform represents a solution to face the abovementioned challenge. The ICT4Life objective implements an innovative platform that connects patients, families, care-givers and health professionals through user-friendly tools, using results on emerging technologies. The platform is aimed at facilitating patient empowerment, supporting care-givers and establishing cooperation channels within professionals for integrated care.
The ICT4Life platform is based on the use of available sensors, which collect information about the health status of the patient while monitoring his / her movement and evolution of symptoms. Through the platform it is possible to infer if a patient is disoriented, confused, spends too much time immobile or tries to leave the house. Moreover, sensors detect emergency situations such as falls, freezing and festination to alert care-givers and professionals to the need for immediate care. Additionally, there is an evaluation of therapy-related exercises for the patient through these sensors. To sum up, the ICT4Life platform:
• monitors patients in real-time to alarm and call for early intervention;
• prevents risk of falls, social isolation, depression, poor well-being and inadequate
medication management;
• promotes patients’ independence, safety and social involvement;
• provides timely support to care-givers, helping them to feel less stressed;
• enables information exchange among health professionals for a better coordination of care.
The approach The ICT4Life approach is based on the involvement of end-users’ in the development of the technology. For this reason, end-users’ organisations have participated in the co-creation process since the beginning. This started with the analysis of requirements and functional design