The Erasmus + project Fall-In-Age (Innovative training for technology-based frailty and falls management), coordinated by Universidade de Lisboa (UL), has started on Nov. 1st 2018.
IBV participates in this project with its wide experience in biomechanics and its application to Frailty and Risk of Falling assessment.
Frailty can be defined as a clinical condition in which there is an increased risk of individual vulnerability to develop adverse events such as dependence, higher Risk of Falling, and/or mortality when there is exposure to stressors.
An aspect closely related to Frailty is the higher Risk of Falling of senior people. Spanish data reflects that 50% of people over 65 years will suffer at least a fall, those over 80 years will fall at least once a year. Most of these falls have clinical consequences such as hip fracture, whose average cost of discharge per patient is 8,365€, which represents millions of euros in health care costs. Currently, there are available new technologies that could help in the evaluation of the risk of Falling in primary healthcare.
Hence, the main objective of the project is the development, validation and transfer of an online open access course focused on the latest advances in biomechanics and technology and especially aimed at updating the current practitioners’ needs in relation to a more objective evaluation of Frailty & Falls Management.
The course will be intended for students and primary care professionals (family doctors and nurses), specialists in geriatrics and gerontology, rehabilitation and occupational medicine for risk prevention.
The Fall-In-Age course will focus on offering a body of advanced knowledge in the following topics:
♦ Relationship between Frailty and falls in older adults.
♦ Impact and importance of Frailty and falls assessment in primary healthcare
♦ Risk factors and prevention; biomechanical aspects related to functional deterioration, Frailty and falls; active aging and functional capability surveillance; and new technological applications for risk screening in primary healthcare.
The main expected results can be classified into three intellectual products:
O1: Specification and design of the Fall-In-Age course.
O2: Development and validation of the course integrated in the e-learning platform.
O3: Final version of the online courses in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
Fall-In-Age Consortium is strong and competent. Besides UL and IBV, the European General Practice Research Network (EGPRN) from The Netherlands and the Istituto Nazionale di Riposo e Cura degli Anziani (INRCA) from Italy participate in the project.
The partners have met in Lisbon on November 27th for the first face-to-face project meeting, in which they have discussed around project objectives and they have set up details of the activities scheduled for the following months.
