FrailSafe: An ICT Platform for Unobtrusive Sensing of Multi-Domain Frailty for Personalized Interventions.

Abstract

The implications of frailty in older adults' health status and autonomy necessitates the understanding and effective management of this widespread condition as a priority for modern societies. Despite its importance, we still stand far from early detection, effective management and prevention of frailty. One of the most important reasons for this is the lack of sensitive instruments able to early identify frailty and pre-frailty conditions. The FrailSafe system provides a novel approach to this complex, medical, social and public health problem. It aspires to identify the most important components of frailty, construct cumulative metrics serving as biomarkers, and apply this knowledge and expertise for self-management and prevention. This paper presents a high-level overview of the FrailSafe system architecture providing details on the monitoring sensors and devices, the software front-ends for the interaction of the users with the system, as well as the back-end part including the data analysis and decision support modules. Data storage, remote processing and security issues are also discussed. The evaluation of the system by older individuals from 3 different countries highlighted the potential of frailty prediction strategies based on information and communication technology (ICT).