COMFORTage’s fifth TA1 Community Forum webinar was held on 26 May 2026, supported by EHTEL.

This series of webinars explores how people living with dementia are supported and what short-term or medium-term opportunities - including the use of digital technologies - can improve the well-being of themselves and their carers.

Watch the video below to hear and see the discussions, presentations and the speakers’ PowerPoints.⤵️

Overview and general background

Luc Nicolas from EHTEL introduced the webinar, the COMFORTage project work in 2025-2026, and the webinar series and COMFORTage project. 

Luc’s presentation focused on digital health services in the fields of dementia and frailty: innovation, technology, and the integration of evidence. He started with two major questions underpinning the workshop:

• Is evidence the key to the market and to deployment?
• How can evidence be collected in an innovative and cost-effective way?

The field of dementia and frailty is now on the search for “optimal therapy scenarios” and “real reference clinical pathways” in Europe in order to tackle the risks of dementia at the earliest possible stage.

The workshop’s examination of evidence-prevention-artificial intelligence (AI) opened up four key questions around digital solutions coming to the market; the faster provision of evidence on what works to predict dementia/Alzheimer’s; changes introduced by the use of AI; and the speed-up in adoption of validated digital tools. The presentation covered materials from cartoons to academic journals to quotes from earlier talks to cover the issues raised. To put the full range of considerations into perspective, three implementation-oriented speakers described their experiences, including especially work done in the autonomous Spanish community of Catalonia.

Speakers' presentations

Three speakers presented, and discussions with them followed.

💠 Sergi Valero: Combining virtual reality, digital cognitive markers, and speech-based biomarker screening tool. Going from research to deployment

ACE, where Sergi Valero is AI Director, is a private, non-profit organisation working on Alzheimer’s. Included in its work are activities on Catalan Next Generation Initiatives.

ACE started its AI programme in 2025. Sergi outlined the richness of ACE’s work in this field from 2022-2025, bringing developments up to the present day. ACE’s new paradigm for activity is a focus on the detection of early symptoms, risks stratification, and early personalised actions. Its overall aim is a mix of better outcomes for people and a more sustainable health and care system as well as a desire for longitudinal studies.

Because “language is an open window beyond other cognitive domains”, ACE is concentrating on gathering evidence for the relationship between changes in people’s language skills and the (early stages of) development of dementia. In a push to record more evidence, work at ACE has zoomed in on covering an analysis of people’s language skills, whether starting in community pharmacies or in people’s homes. ACE works alongside Punto – a digital platform and Nutricia-Souvenaid  – a food nutrients company, on the continuous monitoring of speech. ACE’s latest work is with Las Arcadias-El Encinar on screening in residential communities.

Overall, Sergi covered the five key challenges with real-world deployment that ACE has overcome. He focused in on five take-home messages: among them that spontaneous speech is a viable biomarker for Alzheimer’s.

Exploration is now really needed on what are the conditions that make AI deployable in real-world systems.

💠Margarita Grammatikopoulou: Predictom Project: Evidence validated by clinicians and cost-efficient assessment

Margarita showed what activities can make a real difference to prevention and can be implemented in clinical pathways. Predictom is a Horizon Europe/Innovation Health Initiative Joint Undertaking-funded project with support from a variety of other foundations/organisations. As an international cross-sector initiative, it brings dementia diagnostics closer to the public. The initiative aims for a balance of innovation that contributes to early diagnosis/prevention and validated, robust approaches to data.

Four thousand healthy individual participants, who nevertheless might be at risk of developing Alzheimer’s are taking part in a prospective study. The countries covered are Bulgaria, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A smaller number of 615 participants are involved at yet another level of the study. Two levels of the study relate to assessments undertaken both at-home and in-clinic. The model uses AI and real-world data, and is based on a “multimodal biomarker framework”. More than 30 partners from the European Union and beyond, including large digital and pharmaceutical players, are contributing to the endeavour.

The Greek Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) provides support for Predictom’s model of digital and physiological data. CERTH concentrates on a banking app, and people’s abilities to manage their own financial resources.

Project innovations include AI-driven prediction and the use of diverse biomarkers. Among the variety of challenges facing the initiative are how to align innovation with the provision of evidence, including: getting access to high-quality data sets, integrating multi-modal data sources, and working in real-world settings (such as by using the computers/equipment that people/participants may have in their own homes).

Overall, this presentation zoomed in on challenges and how they have been faced, the alignment of innovation and evidence-gathering, and the shift needed from pathways to implementation.

💠Carme Pratdepàdua i Bufill: Innovation and Adoption Program for Digital Assets in Catalonia: How We Support Evidence Generation

Carme explored digital assets in Catalonia: one of the community’s main tasks is to select the “best of breed” among the available assets. She defined and described a number of resources (whether they are patient-centred or based on health and wellness). Among her highlights: Catalonia has worked in this field for more than 10 years (since 2015), assets are all about adding value for citizens, and over 70% of Catalonia’s hospitals provide digital services to citizens. A lot of the work is done in collaboration with SISCAT.

Catalonia’s programme on digital asset innovation and adoption is aiming to get “all actors on the same page”. She described it as a “funnelling process”. The work done is on types of governance, the identification of priority needs, alignment with evidence, an assessment. Four levels of quality are being examined: content, access design, security and safety, and the technologies themselves.

For Catalonia, a key digital asset is La Meva Salut, which supplies access to shared electronic health records.

A highly readable and relevant guide is TicSalutSocial’s 2024 guidelines for developing digital assets with citizens. In this light, Carme also highlighted the availability of the foundation’s digital app library, and spoke in detail about offering advice and guidance to app/software designers and developers, on tackling applications to procurement processes, and on work based on CEN/ISO 82304-2. 

Discussions

Raquel Almeida, from F6S, spoke of the digital platform’s work on supporting companies, including start-ups. She laid out the challenges related to the procurement of digital tools through public tenders, and outlined some of the perverse dynamics that can result. In terms of squaring the circle (the sub-title of the workshop), as she said, currently “the circle does not close”.

Together with the speakers, she explored a variety of topics. She used her general background to query:

• Whether public-private partnerships can be useful in accelerating the shift of innovations into use in the community (e.g., in community pharmacies and residential communities) and the budgetary implications.
• Multi-country experiences of working together on initiatives, and which countries are best prepared to start implementation.
• The experiences of start-ups and small-scale enterprises in undergoing software/app assessment and applying standards.
• Who really takes up the technologies

Among other (scientific) questions raised during the workshop were what degree of evidence is available that spontaneous speech is a viable biomarker, and what precisely is the relationship between exercise, diet, and sleep.

Overall, there appear to be clear differences present at country levels. Regions are, interestingly, taking “stepwise” approaches. Different ‘languages’ need to be spoken with e.g., patients and clinicians. Indeed, this can make for “intricate synergies”.

In conclusion, EHTEL’s Luc Nicolas emphasised just how much, today and in the future, good hand-overs (“relays”) to policy-makers, and in support of innovators/implementers are needed. The workshop showed what examples of good practice are available! It is, ultimately all about “putting technologies/solutions into people’s hands”.

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Watch out for more on the work of COMFORTage over the next couple of years, especially in terms of the potential for next steps. Meanwhile, in 2026, COMFORTage is updating its good practice evidence from its 13 pilots, including work by ACE.

Learn more about the COMFORTage Community Forum. 

Read COMFORTage’s short news report on the event.

For information on COMFORTage’s Call for adopters of pilot good practices, see here. The Call is open until 3 October 2026.