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

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

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.

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Several PreventIT partners met in Lausanne in Switzerland June 6-7, 2016, to discuss and put together pieces of work required for the electronic version of the LiFE intervention (eLiFE) to work as intended. The coordinator of PreventIT, Jorunn L Helbostad, described the work performed by the consortium as a ‘cog wheel’: Each of the elements of the work performed has to work together in order for the mHealth system to work as intended. And, we seem to be on track! An exercise database has been developed and instructions translated. The development of the smartphone application delivering the intervention has madeRead More

The Amsterdam workshop (24th – 26th April) was the third workshop in a series of workshops (workshop #1 Stuttgart, workshop #2 Bologna) focusing on the development of the adapted Lifestyle-integrated Functional Exercise Programme (aLiFE). The aLiFE development and related workshops were coordinated by Work Package 4 (RBK Stuttgart). The aLiFE programme has been adapted to the PreventIT target populations of young older adults aged 60-70. The Amsterdam workshop focused on teaching aLiFE trainers and assessors for a pilot study aiming to evaluate the new aLiFE programme. RBK taught the components of the aLiFE programme including a new exercise framework focusingRead More

Bloggers: Jorunn L. Helbostad and Beatrix Vereijken Professors at the Department of Neuroscience, NTNU Norway, and coordinators of the EU-project PreventIT          Prof. Jorunn Helbostad                Prof. Beatrix Vereijken Almost daily, new mobile technology becomes available to help us get or remain in shape, such as fitness apps, heart rate monitors, and fitness trackers. Most of this technology is aimed at young adults and is developed to help them achieve specific training goals. Can we use this new mobile technology to create solutions that can help older adults to become moreRead More

The PreventIT study was presented by Jorunn L. Helbostad and Beatrix Vereijken, on behalf of the PreventIT consortium, at Mobex (Mobility and Exercise in the Elderly) meeting in Umeå, Sweden, January 2016. The title of the presentation was Early risk detection and prevention in young older adults – The protocol of the PreventIT study.

The EU Horizon2020-funded PreventIT project had its official kick-off meeting on January 25–26, 2016, in Trondheim, Norway. Almost 30 representatives from the nine consortium project partners met to start this three-year project.