SHIRE: Self-management approach to Healthy ageing using an ICT-Dashboard for engagement and Response

Europe’s healthcare system is currently still very much focused on ‘curing’ rather than ‘preventing’. This approach is not appropriate for the management off long term conditions for older citizens. Existing preventative health measures are generally still very much ad-hoc, directed at one specific life-style issue or one specific health risk, and/or national or regional in focus. Integrated preventative health systems are currently not possible because: (i) such approaches have rarely been attempted; (ii) sensor systems that can monitor personal health and life-style status are lacking; (iii) personal feedback and intervention systems are either not existing or rarely used.

A consortium composed of 12 partners from 8 European countries and lead by University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) prepared the SHIRE project (H2020 PHC21-proposal) which was submitted for Horizon2020 call PHC21 on the 21^st of April. The implementation of this project will help to keep health care affordable, and to realize ‘healthy ageing’; disease management needs to be transformed into health management and focus on preventive measures to ensure a good physical, mental, nutritional and social health condition.

The SHIRE project leader prof. Bart Verkerke (UMCG) emphasizes that “in this project we will realise a comprehensive pan-European approach around an ICT-based ‘dashboard’ for use by older citizens from across EU nations”.

During the SHIRE project behavioral change strategies from social psychology will be applied to stimulate the user to participate and adopt a more healthy lifestyle. The dashboard will analyse data from the latest generation of unobtrusive environmental and body worn sensors (activity levels, quality of sleep, stress level) to get a clear picture of the overall condition of a person. If (s)he is at risk due to a poor physical condition, poor or inappropriate nutrition, and/or failing cognitive or social condition, effective intervention systems or measures will be presented to the user. By linking them with serious games, the interventions will become very persuasive.

The ICT-based physical, cognitive, nutritional and social modules (sensor and intervention systems) will be demonstrated in three locations, representing south, east and north-west Europe. Our new system will save costs, keeping older citizens in better physical, mental and social condition and change the behavior of older citizens across many EU nations to motivate users to take responsibility for their own health and well being.

SHIRE Consortium partners: University Medical Center Groningen (coordinator, NL), University of Ulster (UK), University of Groningen (NL), Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (LT), University De La Iglesia De Deusto (ES), Trinity College Dublin (IE), and several industries: IT in Medicine cluster (LT), Latvian IT cluster (LV), CGI Netherlands, Virtech (BG), Redburn Solutions (UK) and Siemens AG (DE).