CombHI: Combining Health and ICT perspectives to build health services for the ageing

Institutionalization of multimorbid elderly people in nursing homes or hospitals is common practice in Norway and other Western countries, despite the fact that most of us would prefer to live longer, safely at home. The current practice is a substantial and growing cost factor for the health system and anything that will keep people longer at home will have significant socio-economic benefits. At the same time the quality of life and end-of-life care, and burden on caretakers at home must be carefully considered. This also includes ethical decision making, advance care planning, and proper assessment and treatment of pain and distressing symptoms. HORIZON 2020 Work Programme (2018-2020) encourages researchers, public care providers, end-users and industry to build sustainable health services for the ageing population. The main aim of our proposed project, CombHI, is to develop the background needed to successfully submit innovative applications to large international collaborative projects, combining Health & ICT approaches. Our Norwegian consortium with close international collaboration covers organization-types to join the collaborative Horizon 2020 project: Municipalities, hospitals, industry, end-users, and universities. Head of project is Centre for Elderly and Nursing Home Medicine, University of Bergen (UiB). Other partners are Incubator, UiB; Norwegian Smart Care Cluster; Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Ageing and Health, and Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator. Excellent researchers from seven other countries participate. CombHI sent one application to H2020 for the call SC1-BHC-23-2018 in April 2018 with a project called "PALLiative care Innovation for Community Dwelling people with DEMentia, PALLIDEM". PALLIDEM recieved an evaluation on treshold, 12 of 15 points. In September 2019 the project leader lead an application for Centre for Research-driven Innovation (SFI), partly helped by the consortium in CombHI. The SFI-application was important to build network and prepare for coming EU applications. After the PALIDEM-application in 2018, the priority has shifted towards research on technology for persons with dementia is the new focus area, asistive- and sensor technology particularly. Through the SFI-process we have already built media strategy, and made connections with industry partners for future EU-calls. We are currently working towards applying for a Horizon 2020 project. The call is: SC1-DTH-12-2020: Use of Real-World Data to advance research on the management of complex chronic conditions. This call had a deadline in April 2020, but the deadline was pushed to June 2020 due to the corona crisis. In february 2020 we applyed for an ERC consolidator grant.

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Institutionalization of multimorbid elderly people in nursing homes or hospitals is common practice in Norway and other Western countries, despite the fact that most of us would prefer to live longer, safely at home. The current practice is a substantial and growing cost factor for the health system and anything that will keep people longer at home will have significant socio-economic benefits. At the same time the quality of life and end-of-life care, and burden on caretakers at home must be carefully considered. This also includes ethical decision making, advance care planning, and proper assessment and treatment of pain and distressing symptoms. HORIZON 2020 Work Programme (2018-2020) encourages researchers, public care providers, end-users and industry to build sustainable health services for the ageing population. The main aim of our proposed project, CombHI, is to develop the background needed to successfully submit applications to large international collaborative projects, combining Health & ICT approaches. Our Norwegian consortium with close international collaboration covers organization-types to join the collaborative Horizon 2020 project: Municipalities, hospitals, industry, end-users, and universities. Head of project is Centre for Elderly and Nursing Home Medicine, University of Bergen (UiB). Other partners are Incubator, UiB; Norwegian Smart Care Cluster; Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Ageing and Health, and Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator. Excellent researchers from seven other countries will participate. CombHI presents 3 activities to help reach the goal of international collaboration across subjects and organisations: a) goes through a four-step process from studying the call text to submitted application; b) aims for three pre-projects targeting three of the identified calls; c) immediately start the project application for H2020 call: SC1-BHC-23-2018 by PALLiative care Innovation for Community Dwelling people with DEMentia, PALLIDEM.