Active, Healthy Ageing and Frailty Detection

Development of a Low-Threshold Screening and Support Portal as a Basis for an Extensive Psycho-Social Diagnostic Mode

Project Justification

Cognitive decline, physical frailty, depression, anxiety, social isolation, and poor sleep quality represent significant challenges for older adults and place a growing burden on health and social care systems. Early detection and targeted interventions are essential for promoting active and healthy ageing, as well as for preventing, slowing, or potentially reversing further decline.

In response to these challenges, the EU-funded project my-AHA (My Active and Healthy Ageing) adopts a holistic perspective on ageing-related vulnerabilities. The project aims to reduce individual frailty risks by addressing multiple interrelated domains – including physical activity, cognitive function, psychological well-being, social connectedness, nutrition, sleep quality, and overall life satisfaction.

Through personalized, data-driven interventions and continuous monitoring, my-AHA seeks to empower older adults to maintain autonomy, improve quality of life, and extend healthy life expectancy within supportive and digitally enhanced environments.

Audio collection application for speech-based depression detection (left) and questionnairs regarding psychological distress within the my-AHA platform

Our Approach

The EU-funded my-AHA project develops intelligent assistance systems based on multimodal data collection and individualized feedback. Physical performance is continuously monitored through wearable devices that track vital signs, gait patterns, sleep quality, activity levels, and fall risk.

Mental health is assessed using smartphone-based psychological questionnaires and speech emotion analysis to enable early detection of depressive symptoms. This integrated approach provides a comprehensive view of participants’ well-being by combining physiological and behavioral data with digital screening tools.

Based on the findings, tailored home-based interventions are offered to maintain and improve physical, cognitive, and emotional capacities. These include mobility exercises, digital exergames for cognitive stimulation, and tools to foster social interaction.

The overarching aim of my-AHA is to support active and healthy ageing by enabling early risk detection and personalized prevention. By linking physical, cognitive, and social dimensions, the system offers a holistic strategy to reduce age-related risks such as frailty, depression, falls, and mild cognitive impairment.

my-AHA plattform: dashboard (left) and dementia risk estimate (right)

Work Packages, Insights and Outcomes

Within the my-AHA project, IXP contributes expertise in the analysis of speech-related indicators associated with various facets of frailty and supports the feature extraction processes for all biosignal-based approaches. IXP is also responsible for implementing speech emotion recognition within the project’s depression risk application and contributes to the technical development of additional digital health platforms.

State-of-the-art analytical methods are employed to enable individualized health profiling, personalized feedback, and targeted recommendations – paving the way for new approaches in continuous health monitoring and early disease prevention.

A central outcome of the project is the development of an intelligent platform capable of detecting frailty-related risks in a timely and precise manner. This risk detection is based on unobtrusive, non-stigmatizing sensors and data sources that are seamlessly integrated into the everyday living environments of older adults. Once a risk is identified, the system provides access to scientifically validated online interventions, including certified services from established healthcare providers.