SEURO Logo SEURO

About the Project

SEURO aims to explore the optimisation and transferability of digital health solutions across the EU. This will be achieved via an the development and implementation of three new digital self-assessment tools: ProTransfer, ProBCF-C and ProInsight with the ProACT platform. These tools will respectively aim to assess organisational transferability, digital solution optimisation and impact of a digital solution on health services.

  • 7

    Core Objectives

  • 8

    Work Packages

  • 36

    Month Period

Background to SEURO

The SEURO project follows on from a previous Horizon 2020 project called ProACT (Grant No 689996, please see: proact2020.eu). The aim of ProACT was to develop and evaluate (at a proof of concept level) a digital platform to integrate a wide variety of new and existing technologies to improve and advance home-based self-management and integrated care for older adults (over 65 years) with multimorbidity, including associated co-morbidities (focus was on diabetes, chronic heart disease/failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)).

ProACT sought to address for 4 key areas within the project aim:

  • To facilitate people with multi morbidities to proactively manage their health and care
  • To improve the effectiveness of services and care delivery for patients with multimorbidity
  • To advance new healthcare models that are flexible and person-centric
  • To advance home-based healthcare and use of ICT-AT for management of multimorbidity

This was successfully achieved with trial outcomes showing significant benefits of implementing the ProACT platform and associated assistive technologies for people with multi morbidity and their care network. As a result, the SEURO project will continue this work and further develop the ProACT platform with 3 new implementation and transferability support tools (ProTransfer, ProBCF and ProInsight), which will be evaluated with the ProACT platform via Effectiveness Implementation Hybrid (EIH) trials (Ireland, Belgium and Sweden) and an Inductive-Simultaneous Exploratory (ISE trial) with older adults with multi-morbidities and their care networks.

Project and Consortium

  • The project is coordinated by Dr.John Dinsmore in Trinity College Dublin, involves 12 partners across five EU Member states (Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and Austria)
  • SEURO brings together a consortium of academic/research institutions, Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), health service providers, EU networks, and multinational corporations
  • The project will take place over 36 months (May 2021 – May 2024)
  • The project was awarded €3.9 million by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework

Potential Impact

People with multi morbidities and their families

Currently there are approximately 50 million people in Europe with multimorbidity. Poorly integrated and coordinated care for multimorbidity has a range of negative consequences for the health and quality of life of the person and their family carers. Using the SEURO tools to support organisations to advance the implementation of the ProACT platform (or any other digital solution) has the potential to Support organisations to better prepare and support end users (people with multimorbidities and their care network) to adopt digital solutions to actively manage their own health. Better adoption of the ProACT platform may yielded a number of benefits for people living with multi morbidity and their families including:

  • Empowering people with multi morbidities to actively manage their own health
  • Providing information and guidance on how individuals can improve their health
  • Encouraging the adoption of behaviours which improve health

By developing tools to support the transferability of ProACT, the SEURO project can create benefits for a wider cohort of people with multimorbidities and their families.

Healthcare systems

The Covid-19 pandemic has also highlighted the importance of developing well-integrated digital solutions within health systems. The aim of the SEURO tools is to help support health services to more efficiently integrate and implement patient centred digital health solutions in practice. This will include:

  • Providing guidance to healthcare organisations on how to effectively implement ProACT
  • Improving healthcare organisation knowledge to advance adoption of digital health and related assistive technologies
  • Optimising transferability of digital health solutions within and across EU regions

The ProACT platform which will be used in the trials shows evidence as a supportive tool for multimorbidity self-management. By trialling the ProACT platform with the SEURO tools, the project has potential to improve the efficiency and efficacy of health systems in managing multimorbidity.

Economy

A significant proportion of healthcare spending throughout Europe is dedicated to managing multimorbidity and chronic disease. The cost of chronic disease management in the EU is €700 billion per annum with 70-80% of healthcare costs being spent on chronic diseases. In the long-term, developing tools to support organsations to better adopt and transfer digital health solution such as the ProACT platform could:

  • Empower people to self-manage their health reducing unnecessary healthcare utilisation
  • Keep people living at home longer, thus reducing healthcare spending on residential care
  • Improve health system through evidence-based ICT-AT health solutions

From an economic perspective, providing evidence for the scaling up of digital health solutions across Europe via the trialling of the ProACT platform could potentially result in lower healthcare spending for multi morbid chronic disease management.

Core Objectives

  • Adapt and test a transferability self-assessment tool to evaluate organisational and local/regional readiness for digital health implementation
  • Evaluate a Behavioural Change Framework to maximise effective user engagement and scalability of a digital health solution in a real life setting
  • Investigate the transferability, sustainability and scalability of the ProACT platform for use across Europe
  • Develop a systematic approach for evaluating and assessing organisational/local/regional preparedness for implementing digital integrated care systems
  • Enhance capacity of the ProACT platform for managing multimorbidity at a wider scale by developing a data analytical tool
  • Validate and explore ProACT compatibility with existing requirements and constraints of local/regional/national and international procurement processes
  • Develop clear exploitation and dissemination plans

Work Packages

Work Package 1

Transferability Evaluation

This Work Package will develop the ProTransfer digital assessment tool to assess readiness of healthcare organisations for implementing digital integrated care systems at local and regional levels. Outcomes of this Work Package will help develop EU recommendations and strategies to improve digital health technology transfer.

Work Package 2

Optimisation for Sustainability and Scalability

This Work Package aims to develop the ProBCF digital assessment tool to deliver a Digital Behavioural Change Health Intervention (DBHCI) based on the conceptual behavioural change framework developed in ProACT project. Outcomes will help produce an Optimised Protocol Framework for EU organisations to transfer and scale DBHCIs.

Work Package 3

Predictive Models to Advance Transferability, Scalability and Replicability

This Work Package aims to develop the ProInsight assessment tool which will encapsulate a new set of analytics for health-based risk stratification and prediction. This tool will estimate the future impact of the ProACT platform on healthcare organisations by combining existing population data with new data arising from SEURO trials.

Work Package 4

Implementation trials

This Work Package will involve trialling the ProACT platform across four different EU trial sites. Effectiveness Implementation Trials (EIH) will be conducted with 720 people with multi morbidities and their care networks in Ireland, Belgium and Sweden. An Inductive-Simultaneous exploratory (ISE) trial will be conducted with 50 older people with multi morbidities and their care networks will be conducted in Italy.

Work Package 5

Exploitation and economic evaluation

This Work Package covers the health economic, commercial and business development models to support exploitation of SEURO tools and ProACT at EU and International levels.

Work Package 6

Ethics, Data Protection, Regulations

This Work Package aims to develop, support and monitor trial sites across four EU trial countries (Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Italy) with regards to ethics, data protection and regulations.

Work Package 7

Communication and Dissemination

The Work Package will assure that the project and the progress it is making are well known and visible in the community of stakeholders in chronic disease management and digital integrated care.

Work Package 8

Project Management

This Work Package will cover the overall coordination and management of the programme, including the set-up of management, steering committee and advisory board structures and establishment of the legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks to conduct the overall work plan.

Contact Us

seuro@tcd.ie

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