framework – AQuAS Blog

PEGASO: Fit For Future: connected health and long-term strategy

16 Nov

Developing a platform based on mHealth that has mobile applications (apps), a game and intelligent sensors has been the goal of the European project PEGASO Fit For Future, which began in December 2013 and ended last July.

It is a platform that aims to improve both the lifestyles of adolescents (diet, physical activity and hours of sleep) and the knowledge that they might have about these life styles. To achieve this, intelligent sensors (t-shirt and bracelet) which record the physical activity and hours of sleep of an individual and also different apps which record the intake of food by means of a diary and footsteps taken by means of an accelerometer were developed and tested.

The PEGASO Fit For Future platform detects which lifestyles a user has and makes recommendations on how to improve them. In addition, it incorporates a gamification component: based on how healthy the lifestyle of a user is as well as how much their knowledge improves, which are then converted into obtaining a greater or lesser amount of points.

As an example, here we can see a screenshot of a fictitious user:

Professionals from different areas collaborated in the project: developers of games, apps and sensors, design and gaming experts, health professionals (doctors, nurses, experts in nutrition, experts in physical activity and psychologists) and also experts in health technology assessment and public health.

There were two different phases of the project: the development phase of the platform and the assessment phase.

During the development phase, while some professionals put their efforts into ensuring the quality and appropriateness of the medical and clinical content of the platform, others concentrated on aspects of a technological nature.

Nevertheless, the opinions of the end users themselves, adolescents, were always kept in mind during this process. In three iterative stages, boys and girls in Catalonia, Lombardy, England and Scotland tested this technology out in the different stages of its development.

The proposals for improvement made by the adolescents including their preferences were, whenever possible, kept in mind for the later versions of the platform. The aim was to guarantee as far as possible that what was being developed was practical for and accepted by the end users.

The last stage of the project was the assessment of the platform. The assessment of the different elements (apps, games and sensors) was to see if they really did help to improve the lifestyles and knowledge about lifestyles among adolescents and to assess the experience of the user after having used the platform.

To this end, a pilot study was carried out with adolescents from Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland and England in which 365 mobile phones with the PEGASO platform installed were used by adolescents.

After six months of use, the intervention was assessed by means of validated questionnaires, a qualitative methodology and data obtained from the platform itself. A control group was introduced allowing for comparisons to be made with adolescents that did not have access to the platform.

The results of this study will help to evaluate whether new technologies are practical in helping adolescents improve both their lifestyles and knowledge about these lifestyles, a population group accustomed to using new technologies and that, in general, do not often visit health professionals.

Getting closer to the population by using mobile technology and the recreational aspect of gaming could be a good strategy for an intervention of this type related to the promotion of healthy lifestyles among adolescents. At a population level, it is a long-term strategy and hence the slogan “Fit For Future” of the PEGASO project.

Post written by Elisa Puigdomènech.

An indicator for a more fairly funded primary care

7 Apr

The Catalan government has recently expressed its willingness to increase the importance ascribed to the socio-economic level of regions when calculating the budget for each primary care team.

This fact invites us to ask ourselves a question: why is it important to bear in mind the economic inequality in the funding of primary care teams?

The influence of socio-economic inequalities on the health of the population is a fact that has been widely studied since the 60s of last century and of which there is evidence both in the international and national context.

We know that people with a lower socio-economic status have more probability of dying before the age of 65 and that they show more physical and mental health problems during their lives. It is logical, therefore, to conclude that they need to make a more intensive use of health resources.

We also know that social inequality is a recipe for an unbalanced distribution of the population in a territory leading to an accumulation of the most serious social problems in specific municipalities or neighbourhoods that have a greater need for social and healthcare than other regions.

It is in this context that more needs to be done where there is greater necessity if equity in the allocation of resources is to be guaranteed. But where should more resources be provided?

The professionals of primary care teams are those closest to the citizen and therefore, have a comprehensive view of the health needs of the population in their territory.

In addition, the primary environment is the reference in prevention activities, in controlling chronic diseases and from which a large part of community activity is coordinated. For all these reasons, the provision for primary care teams must bear in mind the socio-economic conditions of the population they serve.

How can we find out what the socio-economic situation is of territories in which a primary care primary care team works? Many variables exist which give us indirect information (income, occupation, education, housing conditions, among others) but if we are looking for only one classification we need a unique index that synthesises all these aspects; it is what we call a deprivation index.

Deprivation indexes have been widely used as a tool in social policies because they allow an objective prioritisation to be established in small regions, ranging from a low to high socio-economic status. The concept of “deprivation” refers to unmet needs as a result of a lack of resources, not exclusively economic.

All indexes of deprivation are built by adding up the results of different socio-economic status indicators. The weight given to each indicator could be theoretical, that is, based on what a particular indicator is thought to contribute to the phenomenon of deprivation; or otherwise, the result of a multivariate statistical model.

To be able to classify the basic areas of health (reference territories of a primary care team) according to their socio-economic level, AQuAS has built an index called a composite socio-economic status indicator which synthesises seven indicators: population exempt from drug co-payment, population with incomes lower than 18,000€, population with incomes higher than 100,000€, population with manual jobs, population with insufficient educational attainment, premature deaths or potentially avoidable hospitalisations.

The statistical methodology used for calculating this indicator has been that of principal component analysis. The application of this methodology has allowed us to obtain a socio-economic status map of Catalonia.

The application of the composite socio-economic status indicator has been done within the framework of the redefinition of the model of allocation of resources for primary care and has enabled the identification of those primary care teams which will increase their budgets in coming years.

This new model of allocating resources for primary care is an experience in applying scientific evidence to political action.

Post written by Cristina Colls.