The Challenge: The European population is ageing rapidly.
Life expectancy for both women and men is longer than ever before. Unfortunately, not all these extra years come in the guise of healthy years, indicating that we should expect to live more years with disease and disability. In addition, ongoing demographic changes increasingly shift the population towards a larger proportion of people that are retired and a smaller proportion of people active on the job market in general and in health care in particular. Together, these two developments create the challenging situation in which more people will need more health care that has to be provided by fewer people. In order to meet this challenge, a three-pronged strategy is necessary. We need to shift focus from treatment to prevention, increase the use of health technology to alleviate the pressure on health care personnel, and develop tools that empower people to self-manage their own health and function. PreventIT aims to do just this.
The project finished March 2019. Results from the PreventIT feasibility study indicated that the developed interventions were feasible and safe. Participants liked the concept of lifestyle-integrated activities, managed to change their daily routines towards increased activity, and were positive about the proof-of-concept technologies integrated in the app-based eLiFE.
Help young seniors to stay active and healthy with the use of mobile technology. Mobile technology can be used to activate and motivate people, and is especially powerful when tailored to an individual’s needs, challenges, and barriers.
The main objective of PreventIT is to develop a mobile technology-based, personalised behavioural change intervention at the time of retirement that is based on exercises and activities that are embedded into daily life, in order to enable active and healthy ageing.
PreventIT will develop and test a personalized ICT-based intervention aimed at behavioural change in people who have recently retired, in order to decrease risk for age-related functional decline.
The European Commission’s Innovation Radar is an instrument to discover the best and most promising innovations in high quality EU-funded projects. The latest Innovation Radar includes no less than four PreventIT results that address the needs of existing markets. PreventIT was a Horizon 2020 project (2016-2019) on advancing active and healthy ageing with ICT. PreventIT aimed at early risk detection of physical functional decline in ageing people by self- administered ICT-supported assessment and a behavioural change intervention delivered by use of smartphones and smartwatches. The highlighted innovations are a screening tool to identify seniors at risk of age-related functional decline,Read More
view more...We are very proud to announce that the eLiFE innovation that we developed in the PreventIT EU project is nominated for the Radar Innovation Prize in the Technology for Society category! If you agree that prevention and healthy ageing are important, please support us and give eLiFE your vote here: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/tech-society-2018/health-leads The eLiFE program is recognized as an impactful innovation that can help to prevent age-related functional decline. Within the PreventIT project, the successful original LiFE program was adapted to a younger age group between 60-70 years (aLiFE, adapted Life). The program was then implemented on a smartphone-smartwatch combination in theRead More
view more...Blog by Ronny Bergquist, PhD student in the Geriatrics, Movement and Stroke (GeMS) research group at the Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science at NTNU, Norway, and partner in the EU PreventIT consortium. ronny.bergquist@ntnu.no A switch from treatment to prevention is needed to meet the increasing pressure on the healthcare system that follows a growing older population and higher life expectancy. Objective assessment of physical function can be an important step in empowering people to take responsibility of their own health and function, as it can create awareness of risk of functional decline and deficiencies in physical function with ageing.Read More
view more...The health benefits of physical activity are well known, yet few of us achieve the 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week recommended by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization [WHO], 2010). In addition to walking more and sitting less, older adults should also be working on their strength and balance in order to prevent age-related functional decline (National Health Service [NHS], 2015). We know that tailored interventions can be successful, so researchers in the PreventIT project are working on developing and trialling two behaviour change interventions,Read More
view more...June 17-22, 2018 – University Residential Centre of Bertinoro, Italy International Summer School for Early Career Researchers* Date: 17th of June – 22nd of June, 2018 Place: University Residential Centre of Bertinoro, Italy Aims and topic Emerging smart, mobile technologies and behavioural intervention programmes provide the focus for understanding the role of technology in changing behaviours in adults towards an active and healthy lifestyle and preserving physical function and quality of life at older age. PhD students and early career researchers* from a variety of disciplines will be exposed to relevant topics such as how to: Apply theory andRead More
view more...Interview with Professors Jorunn Helbostad and Beatrix Vereijken who are the coordinators of the PreventIT project, which will use wearable technology to measure and prevent function decline in older age groups. Here they explain how they will use the information to develop strategies to keep people as healthy as possible, for as long as possible. Read the full article here: PreventIT _IMPACTPUBLICATION_Brochure_Final
view more...SAVE THE DATE “New Technologies and Changing Behaviours” Summer School June 17-22, 2018 – University Residential Centre of Bertinoro, Italy Concept: Emerging smart and mobile technologies and behavioural intervention programmes provide the focus for understanding the role of technology in changing behaviours and preserving health and quality of life. PhD stu- dents and junior researchers from a variety of disciplines (e.g. behavioural science, computer science, engineering, human-computer interaction) will be exposed to relevant topics such as how to: • Apply evidence and theory in development and evaluation • Engage users, without which the most impressive technologies will be of littleRead More
view more...Blog by: Dr. Wei Zhang, Dr. Anisoara Ionescu and Prof. Kamiar Aminian. Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurements, EPFL Zurich, Switzerland. Life expectancy is higher than ever, making it crucial that we empower older adults to take care of their own health and function as much and as long as possible. Physical activity plays an important role in healthy living. Thanks to the advancement of welfare technologies, such as mobile health (mHealth) technology, we are one step further in delivering services to assist older adults to stay physically active and adopt healthy behaviour in their daily life. What isRead More
view more...Evaluating new technologies for promotion of healthy active ageing: using smartphone apps and sensors to promote activity- acceptability and adherence measurement? This PhD will investigate the acceptability of smartphones and sensors to young older people (61-70) and how these can be designed to be attractive to this age group. The literature and our own experience (Waterman et al 2016) reveal that there can be mismatch between activity data from sensors and report data. Whilst at first sight one is tempted to argue the sensor data must be correct and self-report in some way biased, sensors can misclassify or miss activityRead More
view more...Today, the 8th of September is the international physical therapy day, which this year focuses on healthy ageing, and “adding life to years”. This important topic is exactly also the main focus of PreventIT. Through PreventIT we will empower people to stay healthy and active over time, by using technology embedded in smartphones and smartwatches to monitor and give individualised feedback on healthy behaviour.
view more...