OsteoMentor will assist osteoporosis patients in long-term self-managing of the disease, eliminating treatment drop-outs via radically new ICT-based personalized mentoring and interventions for empowering, motivating and helping them to improve and maintain their independence, functional capacity, health status, as well as preserving their physical, cognitive, mental and social well-being.
OsteoMentor is an Android-iOS AI-based mHealth application, solely dedicated for the self-management of osteoporosis. It is the first mHealth application utilizing VR and AR technologies and computer game environments designed for the support of patients. The functionality of OsteoMentor is on capturing data from a wide variety of sources that will let the behavioral profile to infer the emotional state of the user and could provide to the virtual coaching the ability for affective computing.
OsteoMentor is a certified research project of Khalifa University. It gives special care to data privacy and security aspects, taking into consideration the latest EU regulations and national ethics committees.
The main functionality of OsteoMentor is the coaching of older adults targeting the elimination of osteoporosis’ risks of fracture, falls and depression and the proactive sustaining of their independence during ageing. The OsteoMentor platform will realize supportive feedback by a holistic, three-pillar, user-based approach: i) Personalized Game Suite (PGS), ii) Diet & Medication Recommendation (DMR) and iii) Lifestyle Recommendation (LR) that will be employed both in the smart-home as well in the smart-city concept.
OsteoMentor will also provide the statistics of extreme gestures (x-Gestures) identified by the accelerometer of the user (in his/her smart-watch) that could create or increase the risk for fractures. These statistics are sent both to the user and the attending physician, as motivational feedback to follow behavioral changes towards less risky gestures, in terms of deteriorating the fracture symptoms.
Moreover, to boost user’s engagement, a virtual reality path will be attempted, in order to foster mobilization of the patient via marching in the real world, yet moving in the virtual reality world (e.g., via Google Street view)within virtual routes with various contents, e.g. ,historical, natural, exhibitions, etc.
OsteoMentor virtual coach will be developed considering the holistic behavior of the user and will be an active communication system, aiming to a natural human-computer-interaction. Moreover, the virtual coach will be adapted to the users’ emotional status, inferred by the algorithmic analysis of data, in order to provide him with supportive feedback and increase his social activities. OsteoMentor will not only connect the patient’s summarized information with the doctor but also, will give the patient and the doctor/physician/psychologist the ability to communicate under emergency and preventive reasons if the system detects such a circumstance. Moreover, users can value the delivered recommendations and facts according to their experience “likes”/ “dislikes” and also provide comments on them.
OsteoMentor will assess osteoporosis using user’s hand image which will be captured by the user by placing his/her fingers on camera placeholder. Then image acquisition and analysis of fingers, nails and palms morphological characteristics will be performed, as well as bones percussive impulse response via analysis of sound during clapping.
OsteoMentor will collect behavioral data of older adults’ everyday life via their natural interaction with a smartphone and smartwatch, as well as other smart, connected devices (Internet-of-Things). Extensive analysis of such kind of data using AI-enabled technologies will provide the initial parameters of the behavioral profile of older adults. The total behavioral profile will be monitored in order to maintain self-wellness and healthy status towards the minimization of osteoporosis and ageing related risks
The aim of OsteoMentor is to create an integrated platform for smart informed healthy living in(out)doors, assisting patients with osteoporosis (or at risk) in physical exercise, nutrition, medication control, bone fracture/fall prevention, emotional wellness and socialization, fostering healthcare self-management, set within a collaborative care context with health professionals. OsteoMentor aims to provide Smartphone tool that could:
We would like to obtain data from the interaction with smart devices (smartphones, smartwatch, IoT) at their everyday living environment. This data, comprises of analyses of (voice/motion/typing-handwriting patterns, sleep quality, heart rate variability, socialization/life-style behavior), as well as new disease-related parameters (e.g., bone-status estimation based on hand morphological photos and/or posture).
The study started in June, 2020 and the funding will be finalized June 2023. However, the OsteoMentor project will continue to gather data and refine its predictive performance beyond the end of the funding.
OsteoMentor will develop an end-to-end ecosystem that will perform long-term management of osteoporosis through the virtual coaching concept. The approach will form an intelligent data and medical driven interface which aims to create a behavior profile in order to personalize the recommendations of the virtual coach which will sustain and extend patients’ Quality-of-Life (QoL). The modalities of risk of fracture prevention, medication, nutrition management and physical exercising, are inclusively designed to reduce the osteoporosis symptoms, by creating a behavior monitoring strategy empowered by users’ driven and medical evaluated, recommendations. On top of that, the use of the bot framework, the Virtual reality technology and the low cost IoT, create a user-engagement schema for long-term monitoring of the disease, where the patient will be active and less prone to the risk of depression.
Individuals aged 40 years and above and who are considered at high risk of osteoporosis, in addition to osteoporosis patients (early, moderate stages) (≥50+ yrs.)
Do I have to take part?Your participation is completely voluntary, and you can withdraw from the project at any time without giving any explanation. You must be between the ages 40-90 years in order to be eligible to participate. If you decide to take part, you will be asked to sign an electronic consent form with which you agree to participate in the project.
We would like to obtain data from the interaction with smart devices (smartphones, smartwatch, IoT) at your everyday living environment. This data includes your daily indoor/outdoor routines (e.g., via a Passive Infra-Red (PIR) sensor network for indoors and location data for outdoor/socialization activities estimation), physical activity trends and physical condition (e.g., through sensorial data from smartphone/smartwatch for physical activity risk estimation, gait balance estimation etc.), and your daily mood (e.g., through emotional analysis of the captured data). You will be asked to provide electronic informed consent on the phone app in order to participate in this study. Following this, OsteoMentor app will run on your smartphone background. This will allow OsteoMentor to collect daily data.
The personal benefit will be improvement in your physical and emotional status indices (reflected in the feedback from the OsteoMentor-based initiatives and the reduction of the related clinical osteoporosis scores). Moreover, OsteoMentor will sustain and extend your quality of life by preventing fractures, reducing osteoporosis symptoms, and providing you with a management plan for your medication, nutrition and physical exercising. You will also be able to better understand, be informed and deal with your own health status in a more effective way, by reducing the ageing risks.
There are no foreseen disadvantages or risks in taking part in this project. If you have a concern about any aspect of this project, you can contact the our team KU:
Dr. Leontios Hadjileontiadis: leontios.hadjileontiadis@ku.ac.ae, 02-501-8391
Office of Research Compliance: research.compliance@ku.ac.ae, 02-607-5255
Patients will be approached by the relevant rheumatologists from HealthPoint rheumatology clinic, Abu Dhabi. The work is realized via a collaboration of KU, Healthpoint and external partners that are of high-quality researchers and clinicians, with a rich experience dealing with such research types.
The study has been funded by Khalifa University CIRA-2020-031 research grant. It is adapted within the Khalifa University research portfolio, to initiate a wide study network and it is organized by Khalifa University and is realized via collaboration with Healthpoint and external partners that are of high-quality researchers and clinicians, with a rich experience dealing with such research types.
The OsteoMentor project is funded by Khalifa University CIRA-2020-031 research grant. It is adapted within the Khalifa University research portfolio, to initiate a wide study network. The grant process goes through a long and vigorous review of the methodology, statistics and aims. There is a stringent security protocol for all data collected.
This study has been checked and approved by the Ethics Committee of Khalifa University in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki (application number H21-017), and by Healthpoint Hospital (application number MF2467-2021-19).
You can withdraw from the study at any time by selecting the appropriate option from the profile settings within the mobile application on both platforms. Your personal data are deleted instantly and automatically after you confirm that you wish to opt out.
You can contact the development team at any time by sending an email at leontios.hadjileontiadis@ku.ac.ae or ghada.alhussein@ku.ac.ae with your feedback and the team will do their best to respond to you as soon as possible and fix the reported problem.
We will protect your data to the best of our ability. Your data will be encrypted on your phone and your name will be replaced with a coded ID and therefore your data will be pseudo-anonymised. Neither your name nor your phone number will be used in any reports about the project.
We will give special care to data privacy and security aspects. Our Cloud data storage and exchange infrastructure will be based on the Microsoft® Azure that complies with all the necessary regulations and standards on data protection. Your data will be kept for as long as you participate in the study.
All data gathered from the participant and uploaded on the Cloud are labeled with a coded ID and therefore de-anonymized and the technical investigators have no way of knowing who the subjects are. The full name is included in the electronic consent document that is labeled with the coded ID of the participant and uploaded on the Cloud. Consent documents are uploaded on a different database than the one used to store all other research data gathered from participants
The data will be used by researchers in the team to perform multi-modal analysis and create users’ behavioral profiles. Data may be preprocessed and shared more widely with the research community at a later stage. Incidental findings may be fed back to participants or other health parties. Users can leave the app and delete it at any time. Participants must be 40 years or older. Users can request that their data is deleted at any time by contacting us at:
leontios.hadjileontiadis@ku.ac.ae
ghada.alhussein@ku.ac.ae
Data will be stored electronically in compliance with the UAE law. Your most identifiable data, such as your name, date of birth, address, will be replaced by a numerical and alphabetical code. Study results will be published without revealing any personal information that can lead to your identification.