Funding

This project has received 4 million euro funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 689238 as well as a 600.000 euro grant from the Swiss government.

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Consortium Partners

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NTNU

The NTNU is a public research university with campuses in the cities of Trondheim, Gjøvik and Ålesund in Norway. NTNU is the largest of the eight universities in Norway and has the main national responsibility for higher education in engineering and technology. In addition to engineering and the natural and physical sciences, the university offers advanced degrees in other academic disciplines ranging from the social sciences, the arts, medicine and health sciences, teacher education, architecture and fine art.

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Alma Mater Studiorum Universita di Bologna

Almost 1000 years old, the University of Bologna (UNIBO) is known as the oldest University of the western world. Nowadays, UNIBO still remains one of the most important institutions of higher education across Europe and the second largest university in Italy with 11 Schools, 33 Departments and about 87.000 students; it is organized in a multi-campus structure with 5 operating sites (Bologna, Cesena, Forlì, Ravenna and Rimini), and, since 1998, also a permanent headquarters in Buenos Aires. With regard to the capability of attracting funding, UNIBO is very active both at National and European level. At European level, with 91Read More

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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

VU University Amsterdam founded in 1880, is a leading research university that ranks among the best in Europe. VU University Amsterdam employs many researchers who are among the best in their respective fields, at both national and international level, and for several years has been one of the leading academic research centers in Europe. The VU houses 12 faculties, 14 interdisciplinary research institutes, participates in two national research centers of excellence and is participant in 40 accredited research schools, of which 6 as coordinating institution. In total, the VU employs over 1,750 research FTE and yearly more than 6,650 academicRead More

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Robert-Bosch-Krankenhaus

RBMF is the medical research department associated with the hospital of the German charity foundation “Robert Bosch Stiftung”. Research activities and teaching is attached to the Universities of Tuebingen (medical faculty and health psychology), Stuttgart (movement science, engineering, computer science) and Ulm (epidemiology). The members of the research team currently include 6 fulltime post‐doc positions and 15 research staff members in the areas of medical engineering, geriatric medicine, sport and movement science, health psychology, epidemiology, gerontology, and physiotherapy. R&D activities include different fields of geriatric medicine. The department is currently running several RCTs with complex interventions focusing on physical activityRead More

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Manchester 1824 the University of Manchester

The University of Manchester (UMAN) is one of the world’s top 50 universities. Research is at the heart of the University, no fewer than 20 former staff and students have gone on to be Nobel laureates and the university currently has 4 Nobel laureates as members of the academic staff. The University has over 1,800 staff active in research and over £190m of funding for research earned each year. The University participated in participated in 380+ FP7 projects and coordinated 39. The University has also hosted 33 ERC grants and 27 Marie Curie Initial Training Networks. The University is currentlyRead More

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Local Health Unit Tuscany Centre

LHTC (Local Health Unit Tuscany Centre) is the new health unit born on 1 January 2016 from a merger of four previous Tuscan local health unit settled in Firenze, Prato, Empoli e Pistoia. This important reorganization has been decided on regional level to reduce the 12 Local Health Units in Tuscany to only 3: one (LHTC) for Tuscany Centre zone, and the other two for North West Tuscany and for South West Tuscany zone. This organization change has been decided to optimize the economic resources, to erase the duplication of bureaucratic and administrative systems, to make similar: health activities, systemsRead More

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Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

The “École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne” (EPFL) is one of the two Swiss Federal Polytechnical Schools (http://www.epfl.ch). With more than 350 laboratories and research groups on campus, EPFL is one of the Europe’s most innovative and productive technology institutes and is also renowned for the quality of its teaching and training programmes. In 2013 the Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking placed EPFL second in Europe and 15th worldwide in Engineering/Technology and Computer sciences, and many other global comparisons place it among the top European universities. EPFL was rightly recognized as “one of the world’s most cosmopolitan universities” by the Times HigherRead More

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Doxee

Doxee is a leading global technology and services provider of enterprise-class, cloud-based CCM, with offices in Europe and North America. Over 500 enterprises in banking, finance, telecom, insurance, healthcare, utilities and public sectors employ Doxee solutions to deliver personalized and interactive customer communications to their clients. Doxee customers process over 2 billion documents  every year reaching over 100 million end users  across the globe.

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Health Leads

Health Leads BV is a consultancy company based in Bussum, the Netherlands that focuses on healthcare innovation and digital transformation including on the improvement of communication in healthcare by bridging online and offline aspects. Bringing healthcare technology to the market and to the end-user is the main objective. In all its activities Health Leads keeps a strong view on the end-user and the human side of healthcare innovation. Health Leads is focused on the creation and realisation of market uptake of meaningful and effective digital health care innovations.

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Funding

This project has received 4 million euro funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 689238 as well as a 600.000 euro grant from the Swiss government.

horizon-2020

Project Overview

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PROJECT RESULTS

Over the three-year project period, PreventIT developed and tested two lifestyle-integrated exercise intervention programmes to prevent future functional decline in adults aged 61-70 years: the paper-based, instructor-led aLiFE and the app-based eLiFE. A motivational strategy was developed to support behavioural change towards a more active, healthy lifestyle. In addition, several tools were developed to screen the risk for future functional decline, personalise the intervention to individual users, assess behavioural complexity, and allow users to test their own function unsupervised. Results from the feasibility study indicated that the developed interventions were feasible and safe, with good intervention uptake and acceptable adherence. Participants were aware that the technology was not fully developed, but they 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.

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THE IDEA

Prevention of disease and disability starts with a healthy lifestyle, and the one factor typically heralded for both its preventive and rehabilitative power is physical activity. But despite extensive knowledge about the importance of an active lifestyle for our overall health and function, two-thirds of the population is less active than recommended and particularly retirement is a period in which activity levels drop further. Technology can be used to activate and motivate people, and is especially powerful when tailored to an individual’s needs, challenges, and barriers. In addition, technology can help people to take responsibility for their own health and function from a very early stage onwards, before gradual age-related decline in underlying functions manifest themselves as growing difficulties performing activities in daily life.

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OBJECTIVES

PreventIT sees modern developments in mobile technology as an excellent starting point to enable active and healthy ageing, and therefore aims to develop a 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 realize this ambitious aim, PreventIT brings together a strong consortium with partners from several European research institutions, academic hospitals, and companies that together have the necessary skills and experience to bring this project to fruition.

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THE RESEARCH

The main aim of the project is to develop and test a personalized ICT based intervention aimed at behavioral change in people who have recently retired, in order to decrease risk for age-related functional decline. We will target the consumer market, and not the health care system. The intervention consists of small bouts of exercise integrated in daily life, where wearable sensors (a smartphone and a wrist watch) are used to give feedback on physical behavior, motivate for further activity, and socialize with others. The main outcome from the study is a complexity metrics for physical behavior derived from monitoring of physical activity and sleep by use of body worn sensors. A cloud based platform will be established to communicate and store information of the sensing systems. User interfaces aimed at older people will be developed. Motivation for exercise, usability of ICT solutions, use of unobtrusive technology, and data protection will be paid particular attention. The project also aims to develop tools for monitoring and assessing physical behavior, using data from body worn sensor systems.