CUT participates in research project for prevention of age-related diseases

The Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) is participating in a new EU-funded, cutting-edge project titled “COMFORTAGE” for the prediction, monitoring and provision of personalised recommendations for the prevention and relief of dementia and frailty in the elderly.

According to a press release, this highly ambitious project is funded under the “Staying Healthy” call of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme and will span a total of four years.

It is added that the specific topic of the project relates to the “The Silver Deal” regarding person-centred health and care in European regions. More details on this topic can be found at the HORIZON-HLTH-2023-STAYHLTH-01-01 official website.

As it is explained, the project’s consortium, led by the University of Piraeus, consists of 38 partners.

Specifically, CUT will work together on a number of tasks and activities with other members in a joint effort between medical experts (neurologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, nurses, memory clinics), technical experts (data scientists, AI experts, robotic experts), social scientists and humanists, as well as digital innovation hubs and living labs.

It is underlined that the aim will be to establish a pan-European framework focusing on developing community-based, integrated and people-centric solutions for the prevention, monitoring and progression management of age-related diseases and disabilities.

It is furthermore explained that the project’s framework will be empowered by a unique combination and integration of: medical/clinical innovations (e.g., novel approaches to risk factor analysis and personalized prediction, AI-based medical devices, integrated data sources of age-related clinical evidence, and evidence-based healthcare technology assessment), cutting-edge AI and data science innovations (e.g., explainable AI, secure AI, serious games, patient digital twins, virtual assistive technologies) for trusted, accurate, secure and personalized clinical decision making, digital innovation hubs (e.g., smart homes, robotics and living labs) to facilitate and promote research activities in the health and wellbeing domain and social innovations for promoting innovative views and co-creating new or improving existing solutions for assistance and support for social integration and interaction.

It is added that COMFORTAGE will facilitate the integration, harmonization and management of a host of different data sources, including biobanks, cohorts, medical records, longitudinal observational studies, real-world data about patients, as well as alternative secondary data sources such as sensors, wearables and mobiles in a standardized structure forming holistic health records.

It is also mentioned that CUT’s team is coordinated by the Software Engineering and Intelligent Information Systems Research Lab led by Prof. Andreas S. Andreou, and will be assisted by the e-Health Lab led by Prof. Efthyvoulos Kyriacou. Both labs are housed at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics at CUT.