Node leader: Bettina Husebø
Bettina Husebø, MD, PhD is a professor and the head of the Centre for Elderly and Nursing Home Medicine (SEFAS) with 12 active researchers. Since 2019, she is also the head of innovation at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care (IGS). Her research focus is on care with a special focus on dementia, palliative medicine and care, pain assessment, impact of pain on behavioural disturbances in patients with dementia, psychometrics and algesimetry, sensing technology and smart housing. She is also the leader for Neuro-SysMed’s Care Node. In 2023, she received an ERC Consolidator grant (5-D) and a Trond Mohn Centre for Complex Conditions and Ageing (CC.AGE).
Node activities
The Care Node has highlighted the necessity for a paradigm change in elderly care and argues for digital phenotyping, that is, characterisation of human behaviour by moment-by-moment monitoring with personal digital devices. These are wearable devices to allow for real-time monitoring of function and quality of life, thereby optimising individualised intervention.
Current studies
- The ActiveAgeing study investigates digital phenotyping in older adults with and without PD by wearable devices to improve our understanding of the ageing process and PD. For this purpose, two smartwatches (Fitbit Sense and Empatica E4) and a smart ring (Oura Ring) are utilised in the project. These
instruments can measure movements, heart rates, and electrodermal activities, which yield information about activity, sleep, and stress, among other. The project duration is four years, and it consists of two sub-projects: DIGI.PARK and ACT.LIVE. - The DIGI.PARK study aims to better understand subtypes and symptoms in people with PD. The study will ascertain whether this technology can help identify, track, and predict symptom associations of PD. It will also investigate new outcome measures for clinical trials in PD. Partners or spouses of people with PD will also be included to explore the impact of the disease in a patient-caregiver dyad.
- The ACT.LIVE study takes place at the Helgetun Living Lab. Helgetun is an innovative living environment for seniors located in Bergen, aimed to support social, mental, and physical activities of older adults. The Helgetun residents are encouraged to self-organise and to participate in their favourite activities. For instance, they volunteer in the Eplekarten kindergarten, do gardening, work with the animals on the farm, and support each other whenever needed. The project aims to quantify and understand the effect on this living environment on their ageing process, and to what extent it fosters an active lifestyle. For this purpose, the subjects’ daily life will be monitored with wearable devices, and qualitative interviews will be conducted to explore technology acceptance, the social living context, and their experiences with their own ageing process.
- The DIPH.DEM study investigates whether digital phenotyping can enhance the objectivity of measuring activity changes during the last period of life, by using sensing-based digital phenotyping combined with validated assessment tools to describe the activity trajectory and associated processes that occur during long-term stay in the nursing home.
- The DARK.DEM study investigates chrono-theraphy, i.e., interventions targeting the circadian rhythm. The aim of the study is to develop and evaluate digital phenotyping and virtual darkness therapy to enhance management of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in specialised dementia care and facilitate implementation in municipal dementia care.
- The 5-D study, Decoding Death and Dying in people with Dementia by Digital thanotyping, aims to provide methods and tools to diagnose and describe dying to an unprecedented level of accuracy and robustness, within a timespan larger than is possible now, focusing on the case of dying people with dementia as one of the most vulnerable and difficult to study groups.
- The CC.AGE project, the Trond Mohn Centre for Complex Conditions and Ageing, explore the efficacy and cost-efficacy of a research-based digital plug-and-play mobile platform (ALIVE) connecting a range of selected technologies for use at home based on a randomised controlled trial design (RCT).
The Care Node has also in 2023 developed an introduction course to algorithms for health researchers, to provide graduate students without engineering or computer sciences background with the basics of algorithmics, scripting and programming. The course is designed to empower health researchers to perform tasks related to advanced data analysis, visualisation techniques, and signal processing in their
studies. The course is adapted to the interdisciplinary perspective of a doctorate in health sciences, offering doctoral candidates the skills to perform multiple interpretations and use a variety of outcomes related to advanced data analysis. The first internal proof-ofconcept course took place during the fall semester of 2023 and is aiming to achieve ECTS providing status.
Selected publications from 2023:
- C. Berceanu, N. Arshad and M. Patrascu. Contagion Propagation with Rule-Based Reasoning and Decentralized Control in an Agent-Based Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Susceptible Infodemic Model, 2023 International Conference on Big Data, Knowledge and Control Systems Engineering (BdKCSE), Sofia, Bulgaria, 2023, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/BdKCSE59280.2023.10339741.
- Helvik, AS., Bergh, S., Šaltytė Benth, J. et al. Pain and quality of life in nursing home residents with dementia after admission – a longitudinal study. BMC Health Serv Res 23, 1032 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10041-5
- Lobbezoo F, Verhoeff MC, Aarab G, Husebø BS, van der Torre W, Volgenant CMC. The contribution of palliative oral health care to dying with dignity,
The Journal of the American Dental Association, Volume 154, Issue 1, 2023, Pages 3-5, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adaj.2022.08.015. - Puaschitz NGS, Jacobsen FF, Berge LI and Husebo BS. Access to, use of, and experiences with social alarms in home-living people with dementia: results from the LIVE@Home.Path trial. Front. Aging Neurosci. 2023, 15:1167616. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1167616