Developing an AI-Enabled Integrated Care Platform for Frailty

Abstract

Informal care is considered to be important for the wellbeing and resilience of the elderly. However, solutions for the effective collaboration of healthcare professionals, patients, and informal caregivers are not yet widely available. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a digital platform that uses innovative tools and artificial intelligence technologies to support care coordination and shared care planning for elder care, with a particular focus on frailty. The challenges of shared care planning in the coordination of frailty care are demonstrated, followed by presentation of the design and technical architecture of an integrated platform. The platform incorporates all elements essential for the support of daily activities, coordinated care, and timely interventions in case of emergency and need. This paper describes the challenges involved in implementing the platform and concludes by reporting the necessary steps required in order to establish effective smart care for the elderly.

Keywords: artificial intelligence and big data technologies; digital health; eHealth; elderly; frailty; informal care; integrated care.

Figure 1

High-level depiction of the core components of the proposed solution. Security, integrity, and interoperability services are horizontal to all tiers. Interoperability Services in particular aim to link data originating from wearables such as smartwatches, EHRs such as those based on national infrastructures, sensors (e.g., for temperature measurement), medical devices, and other databases.