Kwido to incorporate frailty technology from the European AAL frAAgiLe project

FrAAgiLe is a new project that emerged last year with the financing and support of the European AAL Programme , for the analysis of the physical and mental frailty state in older people.

Kwido, together with the eVida group of the University of Deusto, is the coordinating company and ideologist of the project.

The intention is to incorporate this project as a new line of business in Kwido, and offer a disruptive approach to combat frailty and be able to carry out early interventions.

FrAAgiLe analyses the status of the user, physically and mentally, based on various aspects that relate to frailty.

The system then offers personalised suggestions for physical and mental exercises using an accessible and affordable solution that combines videos for exercises and serious games to both engage and monitor the user. The system also focuses on being as cheap and less intrusive as possible, using only tablets and wearables.

The frAAgiLe project is coming to its end, and the last version is being tested in 4 different sites in Cyprus, Hungary, Romania and Switzerland.

So now it’s time to start testing it also with different stakeholders. In Portugal and in Spain different organizations have started testing it, and we’re inviting more organizations to join us in testing it.

What organizations could use frAAgiLe?

• Day centers with elderly users that visit us daily or weekly

• Nursing homes with elderly users working to improve their mental and physical situation.

• Hospitals that monitor elderly users that visit their doctors from time to time and want to monitor them while they’re at home. This way, they can also offer them new therapies and suggestions to improve their condition.

Our solution is a SaaS platform, so we offer a subscription model based on the number of active users. No matter how many professionals use the platform, you will only pay monthly or yearly for the primary users (patients) included in the system.

And the cost will be really low, only around 10€ a month per patient.

Feel free to contact us and join us in this early adopters program so you can be selected to test it for free during 6 months.

Current situation

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have realized that something as common as healthcare to treat non-urgent situations, is very limited due to the lack of resources because of the overload of emergency cases.

In addition, with the restrictions on contacts, for a time family members and caregivers have not been able to visit and help their loved ones in their daily needs, and today these encounters are minor and carrying out a security protocol to avoid contagion.

Older adults are practically isolated, and any deterioration in their health condition (physical and cognitive) is difficult to detect. Many private companies and public health organizations are investing in the development of new technologies to improve home care.

This has meant a change of perspective in terms of how to continue providing care at their homes. The fact that our elderly can benefit from technological tools to improve their life quality, has become a need to implement.

What offers FrAAgiLe?

The possibility for healthcare professionals to carry out standardized tests on frailty, and cognitive and physical status continuously, to evaluate their elderly patients.

Also in an unattended way, through the simple support of caregivers or even made by the elders themselves.

Using a Tablet and simple and cheap wearables, they will be able to do exercises and physical and cognitive games selected in a personalized way by experts, and thus they will monitor the user’s status.

In this way, the detection and management of frailty is mechanized for the first time, a costly and barely addressed process that until now was only carried out in person through visits to professionals.

With this we aim to assist in the remote monitoring of the older users’ mental and physical status, by flagging areas where the user might be underperforming, thus serving as a first reference point for healthcare professionals.

And how does it work?

FrAAgiLe works in 4 different areas to detect frailty:

• Nutrition

• Weight

• Mental health

• Physicial activity

Based on some international accepted scales and questionnaires like the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly, Short Physical Performance Battery, Fried Frailty Index, Sunfrail, etc. the system offers on a tablet various evaluations and tests to analyze the status of the user and sends these results to the healthcare professional that is monitoring the patient.

The system offers automatic outputs and suggestions for both the patient and the healthcare professionals and includes trends for the future evolution of the frailty using Artificial Intelligence.

The patient may use the system on their own at home, or with the assistance of a caregiver or relative. While the professionals may also use it in their centers or hospitals. So, they have a powerful tool to monitor and combat frailty not only in their organizations, but even at home and the patients only need:

• One tablet app with evaluations, games and videos.

• One smartband.

• One smart hand grip trainer.