Whilst life expectancy at older ages is improving, insufficient physical activity threatens ageing population. Physical activity has significant health benefits across all age groups and contributes to the prevention of non-communicable diseases. But, how to find solutions to battle the problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle and to improve the probability of people living a healthy and active life in older age? One potential solution to support physical activity and healthy aging is digital wellness technologies.

Digital Wells research project (2019–) aims to detect the best activity programs for young elderly, i.e. for citizens within the age groups of 60 to 75+. Furthermore, with the help of statistical models one of the objectives is to detect whether there are differences between genders, age groups, in physical activity history as well as in work history.

Activities are measured with metabolic equivalent of task (MET) instead of kilocalories, and this enables more precise individual results. Each participant builds an individual activity program: 6 weeks of planning + 4 months of active use + 6 weeks of evaluation. Physical activity and exercises are then tracked by DigitalWells mobile application that uses the Wellmo platform. The collected personal data can also be transfered to My Kanta Personal Health Record (Kanta PHR) if and only if the participant so chooses. All participants will be anonymous but labelled with a code on the Kanta PHR -platform.

More in DW programme's website (in Finnish, Swedish)

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