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INTEGRA for Aging Adults

 

Whereas the current market offers mature products and services to monitor and support older adults in maintaining and prolonging their physical, cognitive and emotional wellbeing, a fully operational and integrated solution seems to be lacking. INTEGRA proposes a market introduction and large-scale technical and economic validation of a novel integrated solution. 

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The new INTEGRA for aging adults’ solution will be specifically designed to deliver innovative (self, and monitored) care services to cover real life and essential needs in society while meeting the challenges of today’s complex health care environment. In this sense, INTEGRA for aging adults aims at supporting older adults in independent living and at detecting functional decline, consequently avoiding hospital admissions. The new system covers care prevention and management in an integral way, not only focussing on the needs of older adults but also increasing and facilitating the supply of formal and informal care. 

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Care professionals, informal caregivers and older adults will collaborate as a team for enhancing older adults’ health and wellbeing in the following three main pillars:

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  • Physical activity monitoring through wearable technology

  • High risk conditions (if existing) evaluation through mobile smart phones and wearables

  • Self-care support networks promoting formal and informal caregivers’ involvement and information exchange among them​​

The INTEGRA for aging adults’ concept will aim to provide a novel support system with personalized assisted living IT services for older adults in order to prolong their autonomy, improve physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, prevent further dependence, and facilitate networks to support self-care, and monitored care. 

Better self-management does lead to healthier citizens, more appropriate (health) service usage, and fewer unplanned hospital admissions.

In the section below, different stakeholder groups are presented with a short description of their roles, tasks and responsibilities:

Older adults: 

  • to enhance and promote behaviour change in older adults – going from passive care recipients to well-informed, activated, engaged and committed individuals. In addition, the system aims at empowering older adults in self-management and detecting functional decline (trend analysis) in an early stage. Focus is on healthy older adults with mild age-related impairments as physical limitations, sensory thinning and cognitive decline. 

  • Older adults are monitored through apps. wearable technology and in-home sensors in a continuous, unobtrusive way. In addition, they can perform health measurements by making use of telemonitoring devices or apps on the smart phone and answer simple questions to collect more subjective data about their state (PRO – Patient Reported Outcome).

  • Older adults receive reminders, alerts and coaching based on automatic data analysis or based on suggestions from others.

  • Older adults have direct access to a (fully integrated) health record combined with information centres and apps concerning health and disease specific topics. They can grant others access to this data through a permission module.

  • Older adults can initiate or receive video calls in order to communicate with both formal and

 

Informal caregivers. 

  • Informal caregivers: to facilitate (remote) monitoring and support of independent living in older adults by training informal caregivers to use web services, apps and interactive tools allowing them to communicate, share their experiences and support each other while keeping active in the society through their daily activities.

  • Informal caregivers can be granted (full or partial) access by the older adult through a permission module. Also ,a one-time, password-enabled access option can be chosen. Different roles can be defined.

  • Informal caregivers can receive an alert when something seems to be wrong.

  • Informal caregivers can use the video call functionality to start or receive video calls to communicate with the older adults.

  • Informal caregivers can make use of an agenda to be shared with the older adult, family and friends, other informal caregivers and care professionals. In this agenda, informal caregivers can manage appointments and reminders. This way, they play a supportive role in daily planning. In addition, this agenda function might be also beneficial for the informal caregiver, enabling a better balance between their personal life and caregiving.

  • Informal caregivers can offer support to older adults in configuring, personalizing and using the system through a web interface and mobile devices, using a browser. When preferred by the older adult, informal caregivers can act as administrator as well. 

 

Health Professionals: 

  • to empower, train and support older adults in enhancing their autonomy.

  • Formal caregivers can make a description of a single visit (EMR) themselves or upload data. This data is always accessible for the professional who created this information.

  • Formal caregivers can consult the full patient history (EHR) when granted access by the older adult. Besides continuous access, there is a one-time, password-enabled access option as well.

  • Formal caregivers can perform research and analysis on anonymous aggregated data from all older adults (when permissioned).

  • Formal caregivers can use the video call functionality to start or receive video calls to have e-consults with the older adults, and or other health professionals – consulting on same patient.

  • Health professionals can use INTEGRA for aging adults as a tool for accurately measuring and quantifying specific signs or symptoms, consequently supporting them in decision making. Based on this information, they can empower and coach the older adults

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