• €3.99 million in EU funding (building on the previously funded ProACT EU H2020 project which received €4.87 million) has the potential to comprehensively advance home-based health and well-being self-management
• SEURO to advance new tools to support health services and organisations to improve their readiness to implement digital health in practice; understand the cost-effectiveness of digital health to support a home-based chronic disease self-management and integrated care approach for older adults; further development and testing of the ProACT digital health solution to assist older adults living with multimorbidity to self-manage at home.

26 April 2022, Prof. Linda Doyle, Provost of Trinity College Dublin, launched the new digital health research programme ‘SEURO’ (Scaling EUROpean citizen-driven transferable and transformative digital health) today. SEURO has been awarded €3.9 million under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. Led by the Trinity Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation (TCPHI) at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, the project brings together an EU consortium of research institutions, SMEs, health service providers, EU networks, and industry partners.

SEURO (2021-2024), will advance research into the use of digital technologies to support health services and organisations across the EU to support older adults self-managing with multiple chronic health conditions. The specific focus of the project will be on advancing the ProACT platform which has been successfully developed and tested at a proof-of-concept level under a previous H2020 award (€4.87m) and is also led by Trinity College. ProACT aims to empower individuals over 65 living at home with chronic diseases/multimorbidity to better understand and independently manage their health and well-being.

SEURO will further evaluate the use and potential of the ProACT platform parallel to three new digital self-assessment and recommendation tools to support healthcare organisations and services in preparing, adopting, and transferring digital health solutions into practice. Trials will be conducted in 4 EU member states Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, and Italy.

Overall SEURO engages a multidisciplinary EU consortium of 3 public and 6 private organisations, including Irish academic partners Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT – Netwell/CASALA), EU academic partners (imec, UMEÅ university), clinical partners (CareDoc, Region Vasterbötten) one of the world’s leading ICT companies (IBM), the largest global home care provider (Home Instead) and three EU service provider and technology networks (AIAS, AAATE, and EASPD).

‘SEURO’ which is led by Dr John Dinsmore, represents the third successful Horizon 2020 award he has secured (including ProACT H2020) in digital health technology at TCD.

Digital health and the impact of SEURO

The arrival of COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption and implementation of newer, safer digital tools for healthcare. Health systems globally including the Irish health system are under significant pressure due to our ageing population, and disparities in the number of practicing healthcare professionals.

ProACT has the potential to support the Irish healthcare service to decentralise care to the community, supporting the most vulnerable, as was seen during the pandemic with deployments of the ProACT platform used via the Sláintecare Integration Fund trial; ‘SMILE’.

The SEURO trials will help to understand how those most in need of care and support, can be identified remotely so that services can effectively and efficiently be directed to those individuals, reducing the significant burden on financial and human resources.

Outcomes from the ‘SEURO project’ will help provide key evidence to the potential cost-effectiveness of this digital solution, for advancing citizen-centric digital integrated care to support proactive health and well-being in Ireland, in line with the ambition of Sláintecare: to deliver the right care, in the right place at the right time.

Dr John Dinsmore, ’SEURO’ lead said:

SEURO presents significant recognition by the European Commission for the successful research previously conducted under the ProACT H2020 project, led by the TCPHI at the School of Nursing and Midwifery.  This new project will allow us to evaluate and advance our understanding of the potential future effectiveness of the ProACT platform across Europe as well as advance our understanding of key factors necessary to prepare organisations, localities, and regions to scale, sustain and transfer people-centred, digital health solutions.

Overall, the ProACT platform presents a unique digital solution that has the potential to comprehensively advance home-based health and well-being self-management as part of a model of digital integrated care. Through SEURO we will also be able to continue the work from ProACT H2020 to evaluate state-of-the-art theories and methods from fields including behavioural science, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence, understanding further the impact on digital health, chronic disease self-management and integrated care.

Michael Wright, Director of Public Affairs representing Home Instead at the launch of Horizon2020 SEURO Project with European-wide consortium partners (Back row, second from left).