Advanced devices for the training / recovery of the physical and cognitive capacity in pre-frailty and frailty subjects

This project seeks the creation of a training space called “Frailty Corner”, in which there will be laboratory-level prototypes that will allow elderly people, with different levels of frailty, make personalized training. 

Frailty is a syndrome connected to age marked by the decrease of functional reserve, and it is strongly linked with sarcopenia, as it puts elderly people into a risk-situation of disability, hospitalization and death produced by falls. This project seeks the creation of a training space called “Frailty Corner”, in which there will be laboratory-level prototypes that will allow elderly people, with different levels of frailty, make personalized training. This project has a multi-discipline approach, and hence the consortium is composed of technological centres (Tecnalia, Cidetec, IK4-Tekniker and Vicomtech), a health research institute (Biodonostia), a gerontology research institute (Matia Institute) and a university (Department of Physiotherapy, and Group of Robotics and Autonomous Systems of the University of the Basque Country).   Specific objectives: • To provide a therapist-actuation guide including initial protocol, training proposal, training itself, measurement of results and evaluation of effects. • To design new training plans or multi-component intervention programmes that combine physical exercise and more effective cognitive tasks, oriented to pre-frail and frail elderly people. • To create a new system to train strength, power, upper body mobility based in the use of a robotic arm and a strength sensor. • To create an advanced system for specific training of balance and biped postural control. • To create a mathematical representative model of the user’s upper and/or lower extremities’ physiology. Digital modelling technologies that, integrated within training equipment, offer the therapist bigger detail of the effect of training programmes to a physiological level. • To create a “Frailty Corner” space on a laboratory level, to test advances and disseminate investigations both in the socio-sanitary setting and the industrial setting.   In this project, Vicomtech focuses on the development of: (1) muscle-skeleton models and simulations that allow quantification of the effects of trainings with robotic devices, and (2) a set of indexes that evaluate the performance of users in each training session, so that therapists can value their evolution and personalize trainings based on lacks shown by indexes. Further information on: http://www.frailtycorner.com