ABOUT

GERONTE is a 5-year research and innovation project (April 2021 to March 2026) funded by the European Union within the framework of the H2020 Research and Innovation programme. The overall aim of GERONTE is to improve quality of life – defined as well-being on three levels : global health status, physical functioning and social functioning- for older multimorbid patients, while reducing overall costs of care. To this end, GERONTE will co-design, test, and prepare for deployment an innovative cost-effective patient-centred holistic health management system, hereafter referred to as the GERONTE intervention.

The heterogeneity of older patients in terms of health status, physical functioning and intrinsic capacity makes their evaluation complex. In those aged 65 to 84, the proportion of patients with multimorbidity is as high as 65% and rises to 81% in those aged 85 or older. The most prevalent morbidities in patients older than 65 are arthritis (57%), hypertension (55%), pulmonary disease (38%), diabetes (17%), cancer (17%) and osteoporosis (16%). Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent and the most lethal morbidities in older patients, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and cancer.

GERONTE intervention will rely on an ICT based application, Holis™, for real-time collection and integration of standardised clinical and home patient-reported data. This data will be available to a patient-tailored health professional consortium (HPC) consisting of all physicians and health professionals managing the same multimorbid patient, led by a referral physician and which will act as a unique decision center, taking into account the patient’s own priorities. GERONTE intervention will be demonstrated in the context of care of multimorbid patients having cancer as a dominant morbidity, and be versatile to any other combination of morbidities. GERONTE will raise specific recommendations to implement the proposed patient-centred intervention in at least 10 European countries representative of contrasted health system organisations– besides Belgium, the Netherlands and France where proof of concept trials will be performed, so as to fuel their replication and scale-up for the benefit of the European economy and society as a whole.