PROCare4Life Winter 2022 Newsletter

PROCare4Life enters its final phase

After another busy year, PROCare4Life is now in its final phase as we approach the end of our project next year.

The past few months have been very busy and exciting for our team across Europe as we work directly with patients, caregivers, and care professionals to refine our solution and continue to gather knowledge.

Though the finish line is close, we have plenty of work to do in the coming months.

We invite you to check out some of our updates below, and stay tuned for more news in the coming months.

This week marked the first annual World Movement Disorders Day.

As a project developing tools to support people living with movement disorders, this was an important day for PROCare4Life and we wanted to share our knowledge and raise awareness.

We asked some of the experts involved in our project to answer questions about movement disorders, so check out our video and hear what Bogdan O. Popescu, Paola Antoniotti and Laura Carrasco Marín have to say about diagnosis, challenges, and technology.

In October, the PROCare4Life team met held a planning meeting in Madrid to discuss our results so far and the strategy for the remainder of the project.

Due to the pandemic, this was the first time that all our partners were able to meet together. Though it was never the plan, PROCare4Life has been an incredibly successful project led by a team working virtually from every corner of Europe. As we finally got to meet together, we were able to reflect on and celebrate our successes.

The meeting also allowed our whole team to visit one of our pilot sites at the Asociación Parkinson Madrid (APM). This visit allowed us to meet some of the patients and care professionals who are trialling the PROCare4Life system, and see the solution in action. It was very moving for everyone to meet people living with Parkinson's Disease to learn from them directly, and also allowed our clinical, technical, and non-technical partners to learn from each other by exploring how our solution works in practice.

Our team plans to meet again in Milan, Italy, early next year to discuss plans for the final months of our project.

Our partners at Asociación Parkinson Madrid recently presented the PROCare4Life project at the E-Care4PD Transnational meeting in Aegina, Greece.

E-Care4PD is an Erasmus+ KA2 project coordinated by APM and in which the Belgian Brain Council (BBC), the Serbian Brain Council (SBC) and EPIONI (Greece) are involved.

This project was created to facilitate tools to contribute to the well-being and improvement of the quality of life of those affected by Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

The central aim of the project is to share good practices in relation to the following:

1. Awareness of Parkinson´s Disease for the general population.

2. Advocacy for adults living with Parkinson's.

3. Training in treatments promoting the use of technology.

4. Supporting carers through education and counselling.

To this end, in addition to awareness-raising events on the occasion of World Parkinson's Day, a best practice document for PD management for patients, carers and relatives, social and health professionals and the general public will be drawn up.

The first translational meeting of this project took place on 10 and 11 October 2022 and it meant an opportunity for partners to exchange ideas about the situation of adults with Parkinson’s in their countries and the different ways of addressing their needs.

APM had the opportunity to share with the rest of the attendees the work currently being carried out by the PROCare4Life project and which could serve as an inspiration for other entities and organisations to set up services for their members.

You can follow the E-Care4PD project here: Website - LinkedIn - Twitter