TILDA & Trinity EngAGE Showcase Technologies for Active and Healthy Ageing for EU Partners

Jun 26, 2013

TILDA and Trinity EngAGE - Centre for Research in Ageing, recently hosted a meeting of the European Research Area Committee, at the request of Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. The meeting was held as part of Ireland’s EU presidency and representatives of AbbVie, a global biopharmaceutical company, also took part in the event.

The half-day event included a presentation on research in ageing by Professors Rose Anne Kenny and Richard Reilly of the School of Medicine and by Professors Ian Robertson and Fiona Newell of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. The presentation was followed by showcasing technologies for active and healthy ageing, including the ones developed by Trinity researchers.  The research and showcase session generated a lot of interest. Technologies showcased for Active and Healthy Living included:

• Technologies for Falls Prevention and Frailty including GAITrite mat to monitor gait patterns; the VERVE game, a simulated virtual city environment to reduce fear of falling and to overcome freezing of gait; and the Perceptual Function Toolkit which enables assessment of multisensory processing and identify fall-risk.

• Technologies for Cognitive Health including Alertness: Training for Focussed Living, a completely self-administered programme for elderly forgetful people to gain control over their states of alertness; and the Choice reaction time task which assesses mental processing speed and cognitive function.

• Technologies for Visual Health including the retinal camera which takes photographs of the back of the eye; and the Macular Metrics Densitometer which measures macular pigment density. 

• Technologies for Cardiovascular Health including The Finometer which measures beat to beat changes in heart rate and blood pressure and allows for identification of orthostatic hypotension, a risk of falls and blackouts that might have a role in cognitive, psychological and physical decline. 

• Mobile Technologies including the Alivecor Mobile Electrocardiogram (ECG) which is a new technology that enables recording of high-quality, clinically relevant information about heart function from the smartphone.