To address this need, TUM together with partners from France and Belgium have developed a smartwatch app to detect and monitor frailty amongst elderly people in the EU-funded EIT Health project FRAIL which ended 2020. The app will be deployed as a new key feature of LOLA, an existing health-monitoring and fall detection app for the elderly by Qolware. The new feature monitors three key aspects of frailty automatically from the data of a smart watch – low walking speed, low physical activity and exhaustion. Weight loss and grip strength are added intermittently. By helping to keep seniors active and healthy for longer, it can provide benefits for elderly people, caregivers, and healthcare systems.
The screenshot of the automatized Fried score app shows the output of the performed assessment in the five categories and the corresponding thresholds calculated from smartwatch data over 7 days. In this example, the participant scored four of the five criteria ‘positive’ indicating moderate frailty.
Funding period: November 2018 – September 2020
Literature: Fried et al. 2001
Links: https://www.frail.eu/ ; https://eit-health.de/en/supporting-self-determined-living-in-old-age-frail-featured-in-eit-health-idops-campaign/