Yesterday in the morning, at the Lecco Campus, the ACTIVE App was presented. It is a personalised coaching application created as part of ActivE³ – Everyone, Everywhere, Everyday, a Major Emblematic Project funded by Fondazione Cariplo and Regione Lombardia that aims at promoting an active lifestyle through the use of technology. The app is the result of the work of the researchers of Sensibilab – Laboratory for Sensors and Biomedical Systems at the Lecco Campus, ASST Lecco, ATS Brianza and Villa Beretta – Presidio di Riabilitazione dell’Ospedale Valduce.
The app has a dual function: for the user, it is a digital personalised training guide that includes health tips; for researchers and health professionals, it is a useful data platform to check the effectiveness of this tool in improving/maintaining well-being and for designing new prevention initiatives aimed at the community.
We are approaching the new era of digital therapies. Today, as part of the Active3 project, we start experimenting a prevention service based on an App aimed to promote and monitor active and nutritionally balanced lifestyles for the over-60 population.
A clinical trial phase will now start, involving 200 healthy individuals in the 60-80 age group for the next 18 months. The trial will be validated by a screening of the participants’ health status and will include cognitive questionnaires on health status and nutrition and motor, psychometric and neuro-psychological tests as well as blood samples, which will be used to assess the effects of using the app on the participants’ overall health. The ACTIVE app will act as a motivational tool to encourage more static participants to get active and to stimulate those already active to maintain a healthy lifestyle by providing feedback on their activity and personalised hints.
Thanks to Fondazione Cariplo, Regione Lombardia and the network of technological and clinical partners, we are developing an integrated system in the local area that we hope will be used and disseminated after the end of the project in favour of a real 5P medicine (Preventive, Predictive, Participative, Personalised and Psychosocial) of the future.
Prof. Giuseppe Andreoni, scientific coordinator of the Sensibilab laboratory,
