Connectedcare Services B.V.

Project Key Data

Full title of the project:
CLINIC2HOME A social robot to facilitate COVID-19 patients  in the transition from clinic to home

Short name of the project:
CLINIC2HOME

Date of the award:
May 2022

Project duration:
9 months

Lead Company:
Connectedcare Services B.V. (Netherlands)

Project Partner(s):

Stichting Basalt (Netherlands) Agecare Ltd (Cyprus) Kliniken Schmieder Konstanz (Germany) AKTIOS S.A. (Greece) InterMedCon GmbH (Germany)

Abstract

Liz is a new Robotic Therapy Support System (RTSS), i.e. a health oriented assistive robotic coach that supports patients in their medical rehabilitation process. Liz can both be used in clinics and in the homes of patients. Liz is designed to collaborate with healthcare professionals; the social robot and the healthcare professional team up and complement each other in supporting the patients’ medical rehabilitation process.

Liz’ functionalities target the patient daily disease management activities (activity reminders, recommended behavioral changes, daily self-reported status updates, access to information related to therapy), and companionship in cases of lockdowns and isolation. Liz is interactive – collecting self-reports, providing access to relevant patient-level oriented information and notifying of newly prescribed recommendations.

Since COVID-19 pandemic healthcare delivery systems are deeply affected making it even harder to obtain optimal clinic and post-clinic monitoring and follow-ups. Chronic COVID-19 syndrome (“long COVID”) is a new disease with an unpredictable course where current digital support in the clinic (inpatient) and post-discharge phase is very limited. The COVID-19 pandemic shined a harsh spotlight on the challenges many healthcare system face, including the difficulty of accessing medical care for high-risk patients.
This opens a meaningful opportunity for care solutions such as Robotic Therapy Support Systems to unburden healthcare professionals and offer a continues monitoring and support in the course of both intramural and post-discharge recovery in the context of long-COVID symptoms.

This project demonstrates the use of a RTSS robotic system to support Long-COVID patients in their recovery process in clinical setting, The objective is to demonstrate that the use of a social robot can support healthcare professionals in providing medical rehabilitation exercises and structure in the Long-COVID rehabilitation process.

The project aims to demonstrate the successful implementation of Liz in four clinical settings in four different European countries. During the project we aim to use our European network to share the data and further role out Liz as a Long-COVID recovery support tool. Also, in addition to the clinical setting we aim to use Liz to support the transition from clinical medical rehabilitation to medical rehabilitation in the home setting, reducing the pressure on the clinical care system. Inherently we foresee Liz proving its value in easing the burden of care, caregivers’ burnout, reducing costly health outcomes, hospital re-admissions and unnecessary deaths.