PROCare4Life “Personalised Integrated Care Promoting Quality of Life for Older People”

Casa di Cura Privata del Policlinico has recently been selected for funding, through the European Commission “Horizon 2020” Research & Innovation programme, to realize an exciting and ambitious research project called “PROCare4Life”, which stands for “Personalised Integrated Care Promoting Quality of Life for Older People” (https://procare4life.eu/).

This project proposes a flexible, scalable and interactive platform mainly addressed to patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases, like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s dementias, or other chronic diseases. The purpose is to improve the quality of life of all users involved in the care delivery system, from patients to their caregivers and socio-health professionals. This objective will be achieved thanks to the use of innovative technologies, including low-cost sensors to monitor symptoms associated to neurodegenerative diseases, and artificial intelligence methods for physical and mental condition analysis, in order to facilitate a highly customized decision-making process for healthcare professionals. By monitoring patients through wearable, non-invasive sensors, PROCare4Life will learn their habits and detect the symptoms relevant to the main disease. This sensory information will be correlated with the medical and social profile of the user and, based on this data, the therapist will provide notifications and recommendations to improve patient’s health condition.

CCPP is one of the 14 partners from 6 EU countries involved in the project. The other members of the consortium are: Kineticos Lisbon (the coordinator), Parkinson Madrid Association, Universidad Politenica De Madrid, Universiteit Maastricht, University of Westfalia in Muenster, some big IT companies (ATOS Spain and SIVECO Romania) and other clinical centers which will host the pilot action (Portugal, Germany and Romania)

To conclude, the pillars of the PROCare4Life project are: scalability of a socio-healthcare platform, personalization and customization of the adopted models, reliability and security of data access and large-scale validation and testing. It represents a great opportunity to test the use of technology in a wide frame and to enable a multi-disciplinary communication between all involved stakeholders.

The project has been kicked off in January 2020 and will span over a three-year period.