We are well into the third year of the PROCare4Life project!
Progress in these last months has been significant, as we received the results from the first round of Pilot 2 which started in November 2021. In addition to the particular issues that the still-ongoing restrictions and mindsets that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on us, several challenges were highlighted by Pilot 2, and these have been the key to the changes that have been made to the solution for the next stage of real-life pilots (Pilot 3).
Let us break down the major findings of Pilot 2, and how we look at them as drivers for what the PROCare4Life platform needs to be looking at in the near future.
Technical feasibility
The Pilot 2 setup followed the physical mini-PC + sensors- based approach of the previous deployments. The mini-PC acted as a sensor-data collector and aggregator, and the Smartphone App acted as an interaction platform for the users. Technical partners have shown the technical proficiency of the platform to be adequate, as all the components of the solution work in sequence to provide Healthcare Professionals with relevant information from daily measurements of the patients’ activities and conditions.
Usability of the solution
However, the complexity of the setup still proves to be a challenge for the patients. There seem to be many different ways in which the users’ seemingly innocuous actions make the platform behave below expectations. This negatively impacts the quantity and quality of data collected by the solution and, therefore, the clinical analysis that can be carried out from this data. Ultimately, this diminishes the validity of the support that the platform can offer the healthcare professionals when assessing the patients’ condition and treatment.
Moving forward
By the end of Pilot 1, a design decision was adopted to implement the PROCareOS, a first step towards simplifying the installation and setup of the PROCare4Life solution. Still, looking at the operation difficulties in Pilot 2, technical partners have been working on an approach to reduce the recurring connectivity issues of the solution and to reduce as far as possible the need for users to interact with the PROCare4Life platform.
We are very excited to see how the progress and implementation of Pilot 3 work. It is an important step toward patients’ independence and involvement in the PROCare4Life ecosystem, facilitating the monitoring of their clinical evolution, and consolidating the project’s vision of the integrated care platform. This step has not been without challenges, and the project’s technical team has been working tirelessly these last weeks to have the changes ready for Pilot 3. The team is making the final adjustments to the developments; we are just a few days away from the beginning of the final Pilot stage of the project!
This blog entry was provided by Jorge Alfonso, from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Details of some of the aspects mentioned in this blog will be described extensively in upcoming technical deliverables D5.6 Technical revision of the platform, and D5.7 Revision of platform testing and validation report. As a change in the overall implementation of the PROCare4Life solution, all the technical partners were involved in the decision and the developments making it possible: KINETIKOS, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Maastricht University, ATOS, SIMAVI, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and STELAR.