(S) Support (M) Monitoring (A) And (R) Reminder (T) Technology (4) for (M) Mild (D) Dementia
As Europe’s population is ageing, long-term care for elderly citizens will become an increasing cost for society. To manage this transition healthcare policies in the EU and individual Member States are heavily focussed on extending the independent life of the elderly, with the dual aim of increasing their quality of life and reducing the costs of care. Dementia affects more than 6% of people aged 60+ and has a devastating effect on their independence.
In this project is focused on the development of an innovative patient support tool that is specifically targeted to patients with mild dementia. The tool helps patients to adhere to their treatment and share data with their carers and doctors; carers can use the same application to monitor patients more easily and share their own well-being with doctors. This will reduce the progression of their illness and share data with their careers and doctors. This will slow the patients’ cognitive and functional decline, avoid carers getting exhausted and reduce costs of emergency care.
There are four general objectives of SMART4MD project:
- Design an adapted version of the existing mhealth application provided by Pow Health that can be comfortably and reliably used by patients with mild dementia.
- Study the medical benefits of using the new SMART4MD platform:
a. Increase treatment compliance by mild dementia patients from 50% to 60%,
b. Reduce functional decline of patients during the first 24 months from diagnosis by 10%,
c. Monitor and improve the quality of life for mild dementia patients,
d. Monitor the mental well-being of carers. - Analyse the economic and financial benefits of using the SMART4MD platform.
- Develop sustainable business models for large-scale commercial roll-out of the SMART4MD platform in different scenarios and regions.
The designed application was piloted with more than 1500 users within a clinical trial. The study conducted showed the clinical and social benefits for patients and carers, as well as financial benefits for the healthcare system. The SMART4MD Consortium is a strong and balanced partnership, composed by 9 high quality European organizations, combining the complementary competences and skills: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Consorci Sanitari De Terrassa, Servicio Andaluz de Salud (Spain), Anglia Ruskin University, Healthbit (UK), UC Limburg (Belgium), DEX Innovation Centre (Czech Republic), Athena ICT Limited (Israel) and Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden).
