COMFORTage
Fostering Personalized Dementia and Frailty Solutions
Project description
COMFORTage focuses on the prediction, monitoring, and offering of personalized recommendations for the prevention and relief of dementia and frailty.
COMFORTage represents a pioneering effort to address the complex challenges of aging populations, dementia, and frailty. By combining clinical expertise, technological innovation, and community engagement, COMFORTage aims to improve the quality of life for individuals with dementia. It does so while advancing the field of personalized healthcare intervention and prevention and establishing a pan-European framework for community-based prevention and intervention strategies to facilitate effective lifestyle changes.
Why the project?
A rapidly aging European population poses significant challenges to both society and the economy. As individuals age, rates of chronic illness, mental health conditions, disabilities and frailty increase leading to substantial individual and societal costs. Recent studies - in a 2020 edition of The Lancet, for example - highlight a concerning rise in dementia prevalence across the EU, with evidence suggesting that dementia pathology begins years before clinical symptoms appear.
Up to 12 potentially modifiable risk factors account for 40% of dementias worldwide. Besides bridging the gap in approaches to dementias, COMFORTage aims to help overcome some of the known dementia risk factors.
COMFORTage’s innovative approach is based on six main activities:
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Development of an AI-based Virtualized Healthcare Platform (VHP) to centralize AI resources for risk factor analysis, early diagnosis, and personalized decision-making.
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Combination of person-centred & evidence-based innovations and personalized solutions: medical/clinical innovative interventions; AI (serious games, Patient Digital Twins, Virtual Assistive Technologies); Digital Innovation Hubs (Smart Homes, robotics, and Living Labs).
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Prevention aimed at younger age groups (to reduce future dementia risks).
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Digital expertise among medical devices, analyses, etc.
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Personalized plans based on support for healthy and active lives.
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Social innovations for promoting innovative viewpoints and co-creating new or improved solutions for people with dementia.
EHTEL's role
EHTEL is supporting COMFORTage, all its pilot sites, and innovators/tech companies in
- Reaching quality.
- Developing innovative solutions and deploying innovative services.
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Preparing exploitation that results from these innovations.
- Developing synergies with other large-scale pilots and initiatives (thereby enabling a second generation of the European Health & Care Cluster for Large-Scale Pilots.
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Creating policy messages related to Active and Health Living in a Digital World.
What's in COMFORTage for EHTEL's members?
COMFORTAGE is working on three areas:
- A “pan-European framework for Community-based, Integrated and People-Centric prevention, monitoring and progression managing solutions for dementia and frailty”. Which implies:
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Clinical work,
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Health systems-related work on the design of new models of care,
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Different kinds of social innovation.
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- Risk factor analysis and personalized prevention for dementia and frailty at two levels:
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Clinical level,
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Technology level with AI.
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Assistive technologies, behavioural changing applications, and serious games.
Hence, EHTEL members will be able to:
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Learn from project progress on matters that have a clinical or a technology focus.
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Provide inputs, from their own experiences, on:
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Re-designing models of care towards more (secondary) prevention.
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Social innovation that can support the:
- Implementation of re-designed models of care,- Adoption of assistive technologies.Perspectives and next steps
COMFORTage is at the very beginning of its journey. COMFORTage is a four-year project funded through the European Union´s Health Programme, involving 39 organizations from 12 countries.
The project will end in December 2027, and it will be expected to involve over 10,000 stakeholders:
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3,000 regional public authorities & care providers.
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2,000 research institutes.
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4,000 SMEs and start-ups.
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2,000 community & patient groups.
See a description of COMFORTage's proposed work in its project leaflet under Resources. Watch this space for the project's next steps.For more information
Visit the project's official website and social media channels: LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram.
Contact address: info@comfortage.eu
This project is funded by the Health Programme, under Grant number 101137301.
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