Reshaping data-driven smart healthcare to optimize resources and personalize care for hypertensive patients through AI and digital twin models

The demand for quality and affordable medical services is rapidly increasingworldwide, an increase that is particularly relevant to older adults, due to thegrowth of this segment in the general population.

Also, the risks for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and their prevalence increasedramatically and create a heavy economic burden.

Among cardiovascular diseases, hypertension is one of the strongest risk factors forall different CVDs including coronary disease, heart failure, arrhythmia, and cerebralstroke.

Prevention and treatment recommendations should quantify the total cardiovascularrisk by developing models that reflect variations between countries and age groups.

RENEW targets personalized data-driven smart healthcare to benefit hypertensiveolder adults, their caregivers, and their medical practitioners.

Specifically, we will develop a digital platform, using user-centred design, startingfrom existing solutions of the consortium partners, and leveraging the involvementof a wide range of stakeholders.

The platform will offer personalised support to hypertensive patients in managingtheir health in terms of prevention, prognosis, and economic aspects.It will also support healthcare providers in delivering high-quality and efficient careby facilitating close engagement with patients through remote monitoring servicesthat improve the continuity of care.

We will use reliable data processing and novel machine learning algorithms to learnand build personalised profiles and the digital twin of hypertensive older adults.

This will a) boost the medical diagnostic capacity, b) help design future treatmentsbased not only on the current health status evaluations but also on accurateprojections of pathways to restore health via model predictions, and c) allow thetesting and adaptation of interventions for patients in different settings and contexts.Our approach is not limited to medical practice improvement; it also offers a solutionto the issues related to healthcare systems and policymakers.

It supports their strategic management in allocating limited public resources acrossoutpatient and inpatient healthcare services to achieve maximum improvement inhealth outcomes.

It further requires a variety of data such as patient data, medical data, economics and services data which will be collected through a digital platform comprising medicaldevices, wearable sensors for continuous monitoring, gamification elements anddigital questionnaires.

The platform will build and develop the achievements of the PerHeart ERA PerMedplatform which was designed for heart failure patients as a proof of concept for theefficiency of a smart data-driven approach to reduce rehospitalization rates in thesepatients.

In RENEW we integrate specific elements for our target groups within a user-centreddesign which will stimulate participant engagement and will ensure adherence andparticipant engagement during the piloting and validation stages.

At least 126 participants among which 60 patients with their caregivers and medicalprofessionals will be involved for six months pilots in Poland, Slovenia and Italy.

This will allow the collection of data needed to develop artificial intelligencealgorithms and a digital twin model that will continuously evolve over the course ofthe project and beyond.Our approach will enable efficient personalized feedback, optimizing the effective useof preventative medicines, devices, and other therapies, from both a health andeconomic perspective.

To maximize the project’s impact, we will involve 100+ secondary and tertiarystakeholders through interviews, questionnaires and focus groups; 3000+secondary and tertiary stakeholders reached through dissemination actions; 100+primary stakeholders in platform design.

A consortium comprising industrial partners, academia, university hospitals and NGOsin 7 countries will ensure all needed expertise and commitment for the project’ssuccess.