CC.AGE

Providing care and support for the steadily growing population of older adults with chronic complex conditions (CCC) is one of the key challenges of our society. Most older adults do not want to be institutionalized – research has consistently shown that they wish to live independently at home for as long as possible. At the same time, in the coming years, the healthcare system will register a lack of professional health care workers to match future demands, which calls for a paradigm change.

The primary aim of CC.AGE is to improve the living situation for older adults with chronic complex conditions to live safely and independently at home with a good quality of life. At the same time, CC.AGE aims to support their relatives and municipal healthcare professionals. To achieve this, we aim to:

• design, implement, and test the efficacy of a research-based digital plug-and-play platform with a range of technologies integrated into a mobile tool for use at home.
• identify traditional care areas which can be safely replaced by digital support.
• determine specifications for integrating existing technologies and for developing new products that will be able to sustain ‘plug-and-play’ integration.
• perform cost-benefit analyses.
• contribute to the design and testing of a social living environment. 

Transdisciplinary team

The Centre for Complex Conditions and Ageing (CC.AGE) employs major transdisciplinary collaboration between medicine, nutrition, systems science, artificial intelligence, software engineering, economy, and ethics that builds on existing evidence, user-involvement, and methodological expertise.  Our industry partner, Youwell, is a developer of e-health platforms, while our public sector partner is the Bergen Municipality. Our local scientific partners are the Center for Nutrition (UiB) and the Bergen Center for Ethics and Priority Setting in health (BCEPS, UiB).

Our collaborators include colleagues from Tohoku University (Japan), Yale University (USA), Harvard McLean Hospital (USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA), and Leiden University (The Netherlands). Our national collaborators include the EITRI medical incubator and the Alrek Health Cluster.

See a short video including interviews with two of our collaboration partners, Heather Allore and Ipsit Vahia.

Work package organization

The approach of CC.AGE is highly multidisciplinary, encompassing various work packages (WPs). The central activity will be a 12-month randomized controlled trial (RCT) to explore the effect and cost-effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention in home-dwelling people with complex conditions. WPs 1, 3, and 4 inform the development in WPs 5 and 6. WP2 for ethics informs all aspects of our work. The management falls under WP7.

Read more about each work package (WP):

1. WP1: e-Delphi
2. WP2: Ethics
3. WP3: Nutrition
4. WP4: Proof of concept (pilot studies)
5. WP5: ALIVE platform
6. WP6: A mixed method randomized controlled trial (RCT)  
7. WP7: This consists of the employment processes and the regular management of the project, and dissemination efforts with scientific presentations, public engagement, and popular science dissemination. The project management and coordination are led by Bettina S. Husebø.     

Societal impact

The Centre will increase access to research-based mental and physical value-based healthcare with a positive impact on safety, quality of life, caregiver burden, ethics, cost-benefit, e-health, and society. This might lead to game-changing support to older adults with complex diseases, enabling them to live safely and independently at home with a good quality of life, at the same time benefiting their relatives and municipal health professionals. 

Highlights so far

The Centre began its work on February 1st, 2024, and held its opening ceremony in the University Aula on October 1st, 2024. The project’s vast reach and multidisciplinarity were showcased through several insightful contributions from our national and international colleagues and collaborators. The highlights of the programme included an excellent collaborative talk by Dr. Ipsit Vahia and Catharyn Gildesgame from Harvard University titled “Medical Center’s Partnership to Support Older Adults’ Needs”, followed by an energizing and inspiring talk centred around “Successes in Aging” by Professor Heather Allore from Yale School of Medicine. Additionally, our CC.AGE collaborators took the stage to provide insights on the specific work packages encompassed by the project. Overall, it was a successful inauguration that demonstrated the importance of personal engagement and collaboration across disciplines.   

See two short videos from the opening:

Additional and prospective funding: To expand our list of living environments and to have a good testing ground for the ALIVE platform, we have collaborated with about 35 industry and public sector partners, including the CG Rieber Eiendom and the Municipalities of Bergen, Sauda and Tysvær, which resulted in an application for a Center for Research Driven Innovation funded by the Research Council of Norway, currently selected to submit a proposal for round 2.

Our collaboration with Vitalthings (NO), Mentech (NL), and Sara Robotics (NL) resulted in funding for the project Emotion-Intelligent Robot System for people with impaired cognition (EI ROBOT) from the European Union program Eureka Eurostars.

CC.AGE team members:

• Bettina S. Husebø, MD, PhD, Centre leader, Head of SEFAS, lead of WP2, WP6, and WP7
• Monica Pătrașcu, PhD, Postdoc, lead of WP5
• Line Iden Berge, MD, PhD, specialist in psychiatry, Professor, lead of WP4
• Brice Marty, PhD, Postdoc
• Jutta Dierkes, PhD, Professor, lead of WP3, collaborating partner
• Zoya Sabir, PhD, Postdoc, lead of WP1
• Lisa Aaslestad, MS, PhD Candidate
• Justin Haugland-Pruitt, MS, PhD Candidate  
• Annelise Elde, PhD Candidate  
• Finn Patrick Nilsen, user representative
• Irina Oltu (Youwell)
• Øyvind Grimsgaard (Youwell)
• Rolf Moe-Nilssen, Professor Emeritus, UiB
• Cathrine Sommersten, Bergen Municipality
• Tine Nordgreen, PhD, Professor

The CC.AGE team on the opening, October 1, 2024.

International partners: 

• Ipsit V. Vahia, Harvard Medical School, McLean, US
• Heather Allore, Yale University, US
• Wilco P. Achterberg, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
• Rui Nouchi, Tohoku University, Japan

SEFAS PIs in the CC.AGE team with central collaborators.

Funding

• Trond Mohn Research Foundation
• University of Bergen