frAAgile

The project frAAgiLe is funded by the AAL program of the European Commission. A consortium from Spain, Switzerland, Romania Hungary, Cyprus and Greece has been created. The platform intends to analyze the status of the elderly person, both physically and mentally, in terms of fragility, and then assign individualized physical and mental exercises to avoid the risk of possible falls, using an accessible and affordable solution that combines videos for exercises and serious games to both train and detect physical or cognitive fragility.

Artificial Intelligence techniques will be applied in order to help the frAAgiLe system learn about the fragility history of each individual end-user and customize the training plan according to his/her evolution. The system will also focus on being as cheap and less intrusive as possible, using only tablets and wearables. The social impact and inclusion of the project has to be remembered, as it is key for success: Greater independence, improved health, and less hospitalisation, potential new market for early detection of frailty. In line with wider political goals, our frAAgiLe project works under the UN Social Development Goals in particular nº 3: health and nº 9: Innovation.

By using the frAAgiLe system, healthcare professionals could be able to perform standardised tests regarding frailty, cognition, physical status, and other parameters remotely to evaluate their older patients. Depending on the results, healthcare professionals could choose from the frAAgiLe application which physical and cognitive exercises and games are more appropriate for their patients to enhance their physical and cognitive health and perform until their next assessment. The frAAgiLe system records the user’s performance while playing the serious games and performing physical exercises and then, stores and displays those data to authorised people, such as healthcare professionals and family members who wish to monitor the user’s status. Henceforth, the frAAgiLe system could assist older adults in achieving better communication with their healthcare professionals and their family members regarding their frailty status and consequently, better care, especially during this time when most contacts are prohibited and possibly dangerous for them.

The frAAgiLe tablet application has been fully designed on mockup. The implementation of this design is finalised for the login, home and games sections. The application is fully open to add securely third-party applications (like games or other) without compromising the security and without asking the user's credentials each time. To achieve this, UNIGE's team design an intent protocol between third-party application and the frAAgiLe one. This protocol is also linked to the frAAgiLe backend for the validation. One of the third-party games to be integrated is the one made by Deusto. We demonstrated that this game could be integrated pretty easily, which is a great achievement. UNIGE's team is also working strongly with the USA company Squegg to integrate their device, a digital hand-grip strength device, directly in the frAAgiLe application. Finally, it has to be said that an intensive process is taking place to design the test selection that will guide the diagnosis part of the application, which will be the main feature of the final product and a strong asset for the project. It has to be said that this selection is comprehensive and extensive, including all the possible perspectives to approach frailty, from traditional physical tests to nutritional and cognitive assessments.

A large list of European companies and organizations are taking part in this disruptive project. All of them contribute with extensive trajectories in different sectors as software development, machine learning, consulting services, program testing...