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EIT Digital innovation to boost worker vitality before retirement

People are living and working longer according to a report in The Lancet from February 2017. This trend is likely to increase as healthcare expands and new medicines and technologies allow people to live longer and better lives than ever before.

Ernst Hermens, Activity Leader of ProVITA, an EIT Digital Innovation Activity explains: "There is a great need to innovate in occupational health. The main objective of ProVITA is to create a paradigm shift in this field by offering innovative propositions that focus on healthy living and prolong vitality and wellness in the workplace. This will involve practical interventions that establish an active lifestyle and stimulate a healthy food intake on an individual and group basis."

In this context, ProVITA is developing a positive Health indicator to increase comparability and standardisation of research. ProVita will integrate the indicator into intelligent technological designs to increase the vitality of office workers and hospital staff (e.g. through wearable technologies, mobile apps and more) and will incubate them. Primary markets in Europe will be the Netherlands and the UK with pilot projects involving the National Health Service providers of both countries.

ProVITA ultimately seeks to increase the vitality of workers before retirement age by five healthy and productive years and to have a measurable impact on workforce outcomes starting with:

  • Awareness of undiagnosed medical conditions
  • Reduced sickness absence
  • Measuring positive change in high risks groups

"In 2017, we plan to build our strategy and business development, set up our infrastructure and validate our activities, including our Vitality Index, with workers from the UK and Netherlands and prepare the business" explains Ernst Hermens.

The consortium of ProVita consists of Philips as Activity Lead, Achmea, Technical University Eindhoven, For All Our Wellbeing, Leiden University Medical Centre, Heijmans, Knowledge Centre for Sports and VU University Amsterdam.

The Digital Wellbeing Action Line leverages digital technologies to stay healthy (prevention and early detection) or cope with an existing chronic condition. Both physical and mental wellbeing are considered. The solutions generally rely on enabling consumers to be well-informed about their wellbeing and to be able to use digital instrumentation to monitor and improve their quality of life, according to the motto "an ounce of prevention is worth at least a pound of cure."

https://www.eitdigital.eu/fileadmin/files/2017/news/ProVITA_Picture_General_02.JPG

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