SmartMe&You
In the context of the ongoing “demographic revolution,” characterized by a significant rise in the elderly population, there is a growing need to promote innovative information technology for the diagnosis, prevention, and monitoring of the decline of cognitive functions associated with aging, such as attention and memory, in order to ensure more effective and personalized medical care.
GOAL OF THE APP
The SmartMe&You application is part of a smart home telemonitoring environment designed to track cognitive and motor functions, general stress levels, and the sleep-wake cycle in older adults who are at risk of cognitive impairment or who have already been diagnosed with cognitive disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease).
The platform is designed to enable medical and paramedical staff to detect the onset of cognitive and motor impairments in older adults in a timely manner. For individuals who have already received a hospital diagnosis
of cognitive impairment, the SmartMe&You application makes it possible to assess whether there is a rapid clinical deterioration over time.
Specifically, the SmartMe&You application aims to support the assessment and training of cognitive functions through home-based telemonitoring.
HOW DOES SmartMe&You WORK?
Users can download the SmartMe&You application on their own personal tablet and use it according to the provided instructions. The application features seven “serious” tablet-based video games that assess cognitive functions involved in vigilance, attention, and rapid decision-making in response to simple rules and visual stimuli. These functions are especially vulnerable to the effects of diseases associated with cognitive decline in older adults. All performance data from these serious games are pseudo-anonymized to ensure the user’s identity is always protected when using the SmartMe&You application.
Only the primary care physician and their staff, with the user’s consent, can access the identity of the application user. These data are collected both locally on the user’s personal tablet and transmitted—via a SIM card—to the GARR Consortium cloud, within the designated SmartMe&You environment. Specifically, performance data are directed to the folder dedicated to each registered patient. The physician and their authorized staff, with the user’s consent, have access to the performance data for clinical assessment. The patient will also be able to view their own performance in the cognitive tests in the application.
The assessment through home-based telemonitoring of daily motor activity, the sleep-wake cycle, general stress levels, and the ability to maintain vigilance in older adults at risk of cognitive decline or with existing cognitive decline is made possible by the use of two additional tools: the “Galaxy Watch 4” smartwatch and the “Sleep-profiler.” The “Galaxy Watch 4” smartwatch collects data concerning motor activity, heart rate, and blood oxygen saturation levels, which are used to estimate the aforementioned clinically relevant variables. The “Sleep-profiler” consists of a headband, similar to those worn by tennis players, which records the electroencephalogram during sleep. This recording allows the estimation of the restorative quality of deep nighttime sleep, a crucial piece of information both diagnostically and for promoting and verifying the effects of therapeutic treatments on the sleep-wake cycle.
WORKGROUP
The videogames of the SmartMe&You application for home-based telemonitoring were created and designed by Prof. Claudio Babiloni (Sapienza University of Rome), based on the neuroscientific studies of his research group on vigilance and attention during the aging process. The application was developed from a technical standpoint by Dr. Antonio Calanducci and Mr. Vittorio Sorbera. Dr. Roberta Lizio and Dr. Andreea Maria Musat (Sapienza University of Rome) are actively working on its clinical application.
HOW AND WHERE TO USE THE APP
SmartMe&You can be easily installed on your personal tablet and can be used anywhere, even without an internet connection: at home or in care centers.
DATA
STORED ON THE GARR CLOUD
Dr. Fulvio Galeazzi (GARR Consortium) is providing all the necessary technological support to ensure the proper functioning of the videogames on the GARR Consortium cloud.
Download the SmartMe&You app now
SmartMe&You is a cross-platform mobile application supported on both iOS and Android operating systems, available for both tablets and smartphones.
The SmartMe&You platform was designed and developed by the research group of Prof. Claudio Babiloni at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology “Vittorio Erspamer” at Sapienza University of Rome (Rome, Italy) in strict cooperation with the research and technological Partners of the following Consortia, financially supported for non-overlapping project activities by Italian and European sponsors of research:
- EUROPEAN HORIZON 2020, H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks; MSCA-ITN-ETN)
- Grant Agreement: 721281
- Title of the project: Blood Biomarker-based Diagnostic Tools for Early-Stage Alzheimer’s Disease (BBDiag)
- Project duration: 48 months (2017-2020).
- ANNUAL STRATEGIC PROGRAM OF THE ITALIAN MINISTRY OF HEALTH
- Grant Agreement: PNRR-MAD-2022-12376415
- Title of the project: Effects of endogenous and exogenous risk factors in patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases using clinical indexes and endophenotypes (biomarkers) as inputs to artificial intelligence (PREDICT-NEURODEGEN)
- Project duration: 24 months (2023-2025).
- EUROPEAN HORIZON 2021, HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01 (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01-01 – Interdisciplinary digital twins for modeling and simulating complex phenomena at the service of research infrastructure communities)
- Grant Agreement: GAP-101058516
- Title of the project: eBRAIN-Health – Actionable Multilevel Health Data (eBRAIN-Health)
- Project duration: 60 months (2022-2026)
- ITALIAN REGIONE LAZIO FOR COMPETITIVE REPURPOSING FOR RESEARCH-DEVELOPMENT-INNOVATION 2023
- Title of the project: Telemonitoring and neuromodulation of sleep-wake cycle and cognitive function fluctuation in patients with Neurodegenerative Diseases: validation of an Artificial Intelligence tool (TELEMAIA)
- Project duration: 18 months (2024-2025).