Telecare specialist, Tunstall, is co-ordinating a part EU-funded project called SOPRANO, which will design and develop new telehealth solutions for elderly people.
The Service Orientated Programmable Smart Environments for Older Europeans (SOPRANO) is a €12m (£8m) research and development project aimed at developing new ways of integrating assistive technology, telecare and telehealth solutions into users’ homes to provide co-ordinated and productive assistance.
It has received €7m (£4.68m) funding from the European Commission and will run for 40 months. A total of 25 partners from all over Europe including Tunstall and the University of Liverpool are involved in researching, implementing and testing products with end-users.
Tunstall’s research and development director, Mike Hodges, told E-Health Insider Primary Care: “The aim of SOPRANO is to find innovative ways of keeping elderly patients at home and able to be remotely monitored. Technology like this can help prevent doctors having to deny elderly patients treatments for falls and accidents, as they are allowing the patients to live safely at home independently but with assurances.”
The aim of the project is to demonstrate how telecare technology, IT and mobile communications can be harnessed to develop new community-based models of care and support.
“We want to look at new ways of giving elderly patients independence at home with our partners. We are researching all sorts of new methods including RFID [radio frequency identification], motion sensors, built-in radars and high-tech breathing monitors,” Hodges said.
It will also look at motor, sensory and cognitive difficulties and aim to make vision, voice or sensory-based means of communicating with users.
The research will seek to develop new ways of integrating assistive technology, telecare and telehealth solutions into users’ homes to provide co-ordinated and proactive assistance.
Hodges said: “The project culminates in an ambitious set of field trials across UK, Spain and the Netherlands with the participation of 600 users. Tunstall will be asking some of our existing customers in West Lothian, Newham, Cumbria and Norfolk County Councils to be involved in the project as end-users and final large scale field trials will commence after three years.”
By the end of the project, SOPRANO hopes to have developed a fully networked home environment where integrated appliances and devices will support users in carrying out everyday activities, monitoring health and well-being and ensuring assistance is provided when required.
Hodges said: “Tunstall’s primary reason for being involved with SOPRANO is to be able to implement these new designs into the marketplace. We believe that this large-scale research and development project will bring innovative new telecare appliances to our attention which we can use to help give patients a more better and independent life.
“Against a background of accelerating demographic ageing across Europe, the latest telecare and telehealth solutions will play a pivotal role in helping to relieve some of the growing pressure on healthcare providers. The low-level, round-the-clock care provided by telecare technology such as this offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional care.”
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