Shaping the Future of Digitally Enabled Health and Care

Abstract

People generally need more support as they grow older to maintain healthy and active lifestyles. Older people living with chronic conditions are particularly dependent on healthcare services. Yet, in an increasingly digital society, there is a danger that efforts to drive innovations in eHealth will neglect the needs of those who depend on healthcare the most-our ageing population. The SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) Innovation Action aims to create an open European digital platform that facilitates the provision of meaningful, holistic support to older people living independently. A pan-European pilot campaign will evaluate a catalogue of digital solutions hosted on the platform that have been specifically adapted for older people. 'Medicines control and optimisation' is one of seven themes being explored in the campaign and will investigate the impact of digital solutions that aim to optimise medicines use by way of fostering effective self-management, while facilitating timely intervention by clinicians based on remote monitoring and individualised risk assessments powered by artificial intelligence. If successful, the SHAPES Innovation Action will lead to a greater sense of self-sufficiency and empowerment in people living with chronic conditions as they grow older.

Keywords: digital solutions; medicines management; patient safety; remote monitoring.

Figure 1

Diagrammatic summary of the SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) system as applied in the ‘supporting multi-morbid older individuals’ use case. The figure illustrates the main features of the patient-held app—medicine control (e.g., adherence tracking and reminders); vital signs (e.g., pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, blood glucose); health and wellbeing (e.g., symptom check). Anonymised data is sent to the SHAPES platform where predictive modelling techniques are deployed to analyse the data and predict deteriorations in disease before they occur. A clinician can monitor a participant’s medicine control, vital signs and health and wellbeing, receive notifications about his or her risk of deterioration via a clinician-facing dashboard and respond appropriately.

Figure 2

Diagrammatic summary of the SHAPES Methodology. A detailed pilot plan was developed centrally by the consortium and included extensive communication with partners and a review of the available literature. Fifteen pilot sites will undertake activities specific for each use case during the SHAPES pan-European pilot campaign. There are five phases to the pilot: Planning and design; Mock-up and prototype validation; Hands-on experiments; Small-scale demonstrations in controlled settings; and Deployment in real-life environments. The pilot will be evaluated within each site and findings pooled together where possible for an overarching evaluation of the SHAPES Platform and Digital Solutions.