Professor Kurt Claeys, KU Leuven, partner in the Fallsify project, talks about the development of the project and his experience with the Straits Committee.
Project achievements
For this project, an app was developed that assesses the risk of falling of elderly people and creates a treatment plan based on this assessment. In the province of West Flanders, the app was used in two rest-homes in Bruges and by patients of the home nursing organisation Wit-Gele Kruis.
The aim of this fall-prevention-app is to get elderly people to do exercises independently, with or without a supervisor’s guidance. They get a nice visual representation of their test results via graphs and this can then motivate them to continue the exercises.
The first view on the results is very positive. This is a good thing, as digitalisation in healthcare is becoming very important. On top of that, the elderly are often a difficult target group to reach in this respect, as digital literacy is generally somewhat lower in this age group. As a result, the app does not appear to be useful for every senior. Nevertheless, it still has a wide applicability, especially among those still living at home. This too is a positive finding, as we are dealing with an increasingly ageing population. In addition, the app was also positively evaluated by both patients and therapists.
Easy cooperation with the other partners within the Straits Committee
The operation through the Straits Committee went very smoothly; the application was quickly dealt with, allowing work to start immediately.
The cooperation with the other partners within this project was very convenient and went smoothly as well. KU Leuven mainly cooperated with Wit-Gele Kruis West-Vlaanderen, welfare association Mintus and Kinékring Noord West-Vlaanderen. A very good and constructive relationship was also maintained with the company ROOS health B.V. from the Netherlands and there were a lot of helpful exchanges of information with the other partners too.
Project progress and scope
Overall, no major problems were encountered during this project. The biggest challenge was the start-up and the selection and motivation of patients, but this too went quite smoothly eventually.
What is also interesting to know, is that this project has/will have a wide scope. For example, two Physiotherapy students from KU Leuven have written their master's thesis on the project. These will be published in the KU Leuven online library at the end of the academic year. In addition, the results of the project will also be presented during a meeting of Kinékring Noord West-Vlaanderen at the beginning of September.
Looking ahead
Currently, more and more health-related apps are entering the market. As the digitalisation in healthcare continues, this is also necessary. However, a concern is that the quality of such apps will deteriorate. Existing ones are generally quite good, but in the future it will be important to separate the wheat from the chaff. After all, if one notices a demand for these, there is a real chance that a large number of low-quality apps will enter the market. Furthermore, it is important that such things are implemented under the supervision of a qualified healthcare provider, because without support, things can sometimes go wrong. It is good that people can do a lot by themselves, but by letting them off the hook completely, you sometimes get the opposite effect.
Cooperation with other partners will remain important in the future. Previous projects have already shown that you can achieve a lot in this way. For example, another app was created in the past in collaboration with hospital AZ Delta that also proved to be successful.
(Testimonial collected in 2023)