Collaborating for Digital Health and Care in Europe

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 expects to have three tangible outcomes:

• A secure, standards-based platform:

  o The platform will ingest a large range of data coming from COMFORTage’s 13 pilots. Included will be biomarkers, genetics, and phenomics (the measurement of phenotypes); cognitive, neurological, physical, and other assessments; social and behavioural determinants of health; person-generated health data; and sensors-generated data.

  o The data will feed a knowledge base. With the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and a library of integrated care models, the base will provide direct feedback and support to the project’s pilots.

  o The available knowledge will take the form of a digital twin. The twin will inform the people in each pilot on their exposure to risks and the probable evolution of the relevant disease: this will lead towards more personalised care plans. The use of digital assistive and monitoring tools – connected to the platform – will also be of benefit.

• A platform offering training and educational resources:

  o Educational and training resources will be developed to be available to both patients and healthcare professionals in the language of each of the COMFORTage countries. A training recommender will offer/adapt training recommendations based on individual users’ profiles.

• A marketplace:

  o On-the-shelf assessment tools and resources will be matched, and evaluated, against a set of criteria. The aim is to facilitate a better match between demand and the market.

   

EHTEL's role

EHTEL is supporting COMFORTage, all its pilot sites, and innovators/tech companies in 

• Developing a quality assurance and risks management process.

• Supporting partners in identifying innovative aspects of their work at technical, clinical, and organisational levels.

• Preparing exploitation approaches that are adapted and result from both the project innovations as well as solid and validated value propositions.

• Developing synergies with other large-scale pilots and initiatives (thereby enabling a second generation of the European Health & Care Cluster for Large-Scale Pilots. The focus is on several common challenges related to multi-modal data integration and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Connections are made to other major projects and Joint Actions that are tackling dementia.
  
• Supporting active dissemination of COMFORTage’s objectives and results, and 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:
  • Clinical work, 
  • Health systems-related work on the design of new models of care, 
  • Different kinds of social innovation. 
• Risk factor analysis and personalized prevention for dementia and frailty at two levels:
  • Clinical level,
  • Technology level with AI.
• Assistive technologies, behavioural changing applications, and serious games.

Hence, EHTEL members will be able to: 

• Learn from project progress on matters that have a clinical or a technology focus.
• Provide inputs, from their own experiences, on:
  • Re-designing models of care towards more (secondary) prevention.
  • Social innovation that can support the:
                    - Implementation of re-designed models of care,
                     - Adoption of assistive technologies.

Perspectives and next steps

COMFORTage is one year into its journey.

COMFORTage is a four-year project funded through the European Union´s Health Programme, involving 39 organizations from 12 countries.

The project involves 13 pilots. The ethical protocols of all the pilots have been approved. Enrolment in the pilots is ongoing. Each pilot brings its own unique perspective and contribution to new, implementable knowledge, even if not all of them involve an actual intervention.

The project will end in December 2027, and it will be expected to involve over 10,000 stakeholders:

• 3,000 regional public authorities & care providers.
• 2,000 research institutes.
• 4,000 SMEs and start-ups.
• 2,000 community & patient groups.

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