Projects

  frAAgiLe - 2020

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.

Project Presentation

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...

  FRED - 2020

These scenarios are developed in a logical order to ensure that the individuals who perform them find a meaning to the activity. Each movement is designed by taking into account both biomechanical and neuromotor parameters and evidence features of sufficient extent to be recognised by the Kinect sensor.


Thesis - Grade: Cum Laude

Contributions made by physiotherapy to the design of a game-based technology solution as therapy for improvement in frailty in elderly persons. Iranzu Mugueta-Aguinaga, Ph.D. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/22749

Publications

1. Mugueta-Aguinaga, I., & Garcia-Zapirain, B. (2017). Is technology present in frailty? Technology a back-up tool for dealing with frailty in the elderly: a systematic review. Aging Dis, 8(2), 176;https://doi.org/10.14336/AD.2016.0901
2. Mugueta-Aguinaga, I., & Garcia-Zapirain, B. (2017). FRED: Exergame to Prevent Dependence and Functional Deterioration Associated with Ageing. A Pilot Three-Week Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 14(12), 1439; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121439
3. Mugueta-Aguinaga, I., & Garcia-Zapirain, B. (2019). Frailty Level Monitoring and Analysis after a Pilot Six-Week Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial Using the FRED Exergame Including Biofeedback Supervision in an Elderly Day Care Centre. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 16(5), 729; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050729

  DAPAS - 2018

Additionally, during the project, DAPAS will develop the organizational and technical structures, and framework around the packages that allow a distribution and plug & play installation at a bigger scale. With the execution of a one-year trail phase, the product will be evaluated and tested. A scope of 120 older adults will participate in the 3 pilot sites (Austria, Luxembourg and Portugal), as well as their formal and informal caregivers. The product will be assessed and evaluated during the whole trail phase, combining participants who use the product with a control group.Two of the facts which are analysed during the project are the (cost-)effectiveness and acceptance of the distribution process. As a result of the project, scientific statements to these facts should be clear. In addition, the effectiveness of service packages on the daily life of the users and their relatives from a user perspective shall be documented and the results will be utilised for further improvements. The acceptance of the different service packages from a market perspective is also an important measurement of the project and should be evident at the end of the project. The goal of the project is a market-ready product which does include all the predefined features.

  AMIS - 2016

The idea of AMIS is to facilitate the comprehension of the huge amount of information available in TV shows, internet etc. One of the possibilities to reach this objective is to summarize the amount of information and then to translate it into the end-user language. Another objective of this project is to access to the underlying emotion or opinion contained in two medias. To do this, we propose to compare the opinion of two media supports, concerning the same topic, expressed in two different languages. The idea is to study the divergence and the convergence of opinions of two documents whatever their supports. Several skills are necessary to achieve this objective: video summarization, automatic speech recognition, machine translation, language modelling, sentiment-analysis, etc. Each of them, in our consortium, is treated by machine learning techniques; nevertheless human language processing is necessary for identifying the relevant opinions and for evaluating the quality of video, audio and text summarization by the end-user.