Field trials for older people, define requirements, ethical & evaluation issues.

Materia Group – AgeCare (Cyprus) Ltd (www.materia.com.cy) is a private sector social enterprise in Cyprus aiming to improve the quality of life of older people through the continuous development and improvement of a wide range of care, nursing and rehabilitation services. Services include two 24-hr nursing, rehabilitation and long term care units in Nicosia (the capital of Cyprus), home care, day care services, caregiver training courses, cognitive enhancement program, memory center, psycho-social support, and physiotherapy centers for residents and outpatients. Materia is considered the main private sector provider of holistic services to the elderly on the island. Management and operations team is based on a multi-disciplinary approach, aiming at best possible services for end user and their families.

As a partner based in Cyprus, we are looking to partner with organisations who have already been involved in previous AAL calls – ICT for ageing well and/or Horizon 2020. Having a broad experience resulting from our participation in AAL and Horizon 2020 projects and being one of the few end-user organisations in Cyprus, Materia Group can provide a valuable contribution to European research funding projects.

More specifically, within your upcoming projects, MATERIA Group can undertake the specific tasks and packages (as an end-user organisation):

·         User requirements analysis: Materia Group has acquired the knowledge and capacity on collecting data from the extensive number of stakeholders (healthcare professionals, older people and their relatives – informal caregivers) so as to understand and capture the requirements of end-users in order to develop a system that will satisfy the needs of the target group

·         Ethical issues: Materia Group is familiarized with the national and European ethical issues that need to be taken into consideration during the testing of a product according to the different needs of the target group. Also, contribution to the respectful deliverable can be made.

·         Trial/pilot phase: Materia Group has experience in identifying eligible participants (according to the target group of the project) and implements the pilot phase in order to collect feedback so as to test and adjust the product according to the target groups’ needs and requirements.

·         Evaluation framework: Materia Group has the knowledge and skills on developing the evaluation framework for the pilot studies so as to ensure valid and reliable results.

·         Dissemination and Networking: Through our participation in various AAL, Horizon 2020 and other European projects, Materia Group has developed a well-established network, through which we can contribute to distributing the project, its results and contribute in wide-reaching impact within National and European level and support it through various channels by digital materials. 

EU projects involved:

HORIZON 2020:

H2020 690140 / FRAILSAFE – Understanding and Preventing Frailty: Aims to better understand frailty and its relation to co-morbidities; to identify quantitative and qualitative measures of frailty through advanced data mining approaches on multiparametric data and use them to predict short and long-term outcome and risk of frailty; to develop real life sensing (physical, cognitive, psychological, social) and intervention (guidelines, real-time feedback, Augmented Reality serious games) platform offering physiological reserve and external challenges; to provide a digital patient model of frailty sensitive to several dynamic parameters, including physiological, behavioural and contextual; this model being the key for developing and testing pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions; to create “prevent-frailty” evidence-based recommendations for the elderly; to strengthen the motor, cognitive, and other “anti-frailty” activities through the delivery of personalised treatment programmes, monitoring alerts, guidance and education; and to achieve all with a safe, unobtrusive and acceptable system for the ageing population while reducing the cost of health care systems.

Active and Assisted Living Programme (AAL) projects:

AAL, CALL 2015 - Streaming of Theatre and Arts for old aGe Entertainment- STAGE:  Development of a co-designed and easy-to-use ICT platform running on tablets and other common digital devices (e.g. smartphones) that will allow older people to access a selection of cultural events provided via streaming technology by a European network of entities and stakeholders created by the project itself. The events will include theatre and opera performances, concerts and museum exhibits.

AAL/0216 - ICT Integrated System for Coordinated Polypharmacy Management in Elders with Dementia – MedGuide: The project aims to improve medication process for people with early stages of dementia through continuously combine automated monitoring with inputs from the elderly patient and his informal network of caregivers. MedGUIDE will build a state-of-the-art tool, that:

(1)    Provides insight in the actual (objective & subjective) needs of elders with dementia by combining inputs from: the patient, the network of informal caregivers and data from IoT devices providing relevant contextual data.

(2)    Provides insight in actual medication use, side effects and adherence.

(3)    Provides support for improving the care and medication adherence through direct reminders and personalized roadmaps leveraging on the network of informal caregivers in helping the frail patients.

ΑΑL/0216/04 - ICT for ageing well - Social Interactive Care System to support the wellbeing of people living with dementia - Many-Me: It will develop a social interactive care system based on ICT assistive technology and user – centred services in order to offer dementia patients and carers innovative solutions and support to cope with the disease and live an active and meaningful life for as long as possible.

ΕΕΑ Grants project:

“Empower Youth”: The key objective of the project is to assist youth become more aware of the many challenges in setting up and running a successful business and the ways to overcome them. Youth unemployment is high. Most Cyprus businesses do not invest in training and/or developing their employees, nor do they provide students from universities / secondary schools with opportunities to learn at workplace. Many young people, to avoid long term unemployment, eventually try to set up their own business with high risk of failure, as many of them never had any prior exposure to entrepreneurial thinking. Highly practical /interactive workshops, mentoring and professional support services are key aspects for youth in successfully setting up and running a business or in entering the workplace. This is what this project aims to provide the participants with. Target group is people age 18-31, who are or have high risk in becoming long term unemployed/idle. 

Erasmus+ projects:

“YOUTH EMPOWERMENT by LEARNING how to truly CARE for OLDER people"- “YELCO”: YELCO aimed to bring together 7 NGOs (Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic) and 35 young people aged 18 to 30 (including 7 leaders of each group) and to explore in a European context, the challenges and opportunities in supporting elderly people in need and the needs of other generations.