Imagine you're looking after a parent with dementia — it's exhausting, isolating, and you never know if you're doing it right. This project built a tablet app that pairs the caregiver and patient as a team, giving them daily exercises, social connections with other families in the same situation, and clinical guidance — all on a simple tablet. They tested it with over 500 caregiver-patient pairs across Europe and compared results against 550 controls to prove it actually works.
Dementia affects 44 million people globally, and the cost of long-term institutional care is unsustainable for healthcare systems. Caregivers are overwhelmed, isolated, and lack tools to manage care at home effectively — leading to earlier and more expensive institutionalization of patients.
A tablet-based mHealth platform for caregiver-patient pairs that integrates social networking, tailored clinical interventions, and gamification. The team deployed 450 pre-configured tablets and validated the system with 550 caregiver-patient dyads across 5 European countries, producing 24 deliverables including the clinical pilot results.
If you are a home care provider struggling to keep dementia patients living independently longer — this project developed a tablet-based platform tested with 550 caregiver-patient pairs that combines social support, tailored interventions, and gamification to extend independent living and reduce institutional care costs.
If you are a health insurer facing rising long-term care costs for dementia patients — this project piloted a digital intervention across 5 European countries with 550 dyads and 550 controls, generating clinical and financial evidence that could support reimbursable digital therapy programs for your members.
If you are a digital health company looking to expand into dementia care — this project created a validated mHealth platform with 450 pre-configured tablets deployed to end users, offering a proven user-centric design process and clinical trial data that could accelerate your market entry.
The project data does not include pricing or licensing terms. As a publicly funded RIA project, the platform IP is shared among 8 consortium partners. Interested companies should contact the coordinator at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya to discuss licensing arrangements.
The pilot tested the platform with 550 caregiver-patient dyads plus 550 controls across 5 countries, and 450 tablets were prepared and deployed. This multi-country, multi-language deployment demonstrates scalability potential, though moving to commercial scale would require additional infrastructure and support arrangements.
As an EU-funded Research and Innovation Action, IP is typically owned by the consortium partners who generated it. The consortium includes 2 universities, 2 research organizations, and 2 SMEs across 5 countries. Licensing terms would need to be negotiated with the relevant IP holders.
The project conducted a controlled pilot with 550 dyads and 550 controls specifically designed to demonstrate clinical, social, and financial benefits. Based on available project data, the full clinical results would be documented in the project's final deliverables and publications.
The project ran from January 2016 to April 2019, approximately 3 years and 4 months. Development followed three phases: building new services, user-centric redesign with patient and carer feedback, and a full-scale pilot across multiple countries.
The platform was designed as a standalone mHealth application on tablet PCs. Based on available project data, integration with existing healthcare IT systems would need to be assessed during any commercial deployment, but the user-centric design approach means the interface was refined with direct input from patients, carers, and doctors.
The consortium brings together 8 partners from 5 countries (Greece, Spain, France, Italy, UK), combining 3 universities and 2 research organizations with 2 industry partners including 2 SMEs. The 25% industry ratio is modest but appropriate for a health technology project that required strong clinical and academic validation. The multi-country setup enabled pilot testing across diverse healthcare systems, which strengthens the commercial case for any company looking to deploy across European markets. The coordinator, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Spain, provided the technical backbone for the mHealth platform development.
Contact the coordinator at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain) through CORDIS or the project website for licensing and collaboration inquiries.
Want to explore how this dementia care platform could fit your business? SciTransfer can connect you directly with the research team and help structure a licensing or partnership deal.
