Abstract
Frailty syndrome is an independent risk factor for serious health episodes, disability, hospitalization, falls, loss of mobility, and cardiovascular disease. Its high reversibility demands personalized interventions among which exercise programs are highly efficient to contribute to its delay. Information technology-based solutions to support frailty have been recently approached, but most of them are focused on assessment and not on intervention. This paper describes a sensor-based mHealth platform integrated in a service-based architecture inside the FRAIL project towards the remote monitoring and intervention of pre-frail and frail patients at home. The aim of this platform is constituting an efficient and scalable system for reducing both the impact of aging and the advance of frailty syndrome. Among the results of this work are: (1) the development of elderly-focused sensors and platform; (2) a technical validation process of the sensor devices and the mHealth platform with young adults; and (3) an assessment of usability and acceptability of the devices with a set of pre-frail and frail patients. After the promising results obtained, future steps of this work involve performing a clinical validation in order to quantify the impact of the platform on health outcomes of frail patients.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the worldwide population of people over 60 years of age will nearly double between 2015 and 2050, from 12% to 22%, increasing from 900 million to 2 billion [1]
This paper presents a sensor-based mHealth platform developed inside the FRAIL project [18] that proposes a multidimensional intervention based on health and information technology (HIT) for frail and pre-frail citizens by combining sensor devices with gamification tools as well as services devoted to formal and informal caregivers
These technologies can be classified into two types: (1) non-portable systems; (2) systems based on sensors and portable devices [32]
Summary
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the worldwide population of people over 60 years of age will nearly double between 2015 and 2050, from 12% to 22%, increasing from 900 million to 2 billion [1]. 11% of community dwelling adults aged 65 years and over suffers from frailty, and it is more common in elderly women [3]. Several definitions of this syndrome coexist, but all concur that frailty represents a continuum between a healthy elderly person and an extremely vulnerable one, with a high risk of death and low odds of recovery. In this continuum, frail and pre-frail adults can be identified. Whereas the former have a higher risk of disability, resistance loss, and vulnerability to adverse events leading to increased morbidity and mortality, pre-frail persons suffer mild symptoms, and oriented interventions may slow down the decline process [4,5]
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