Chronic disease risk prediction with artificial intelligence

Canva
Date of publication:
Project SmartCHANGE - an innovative solution for drastically reducing the risk of chronic non-communicable diseases.
Although the future may seem like something we can only speculate about, the Jožef Stefan Institute, in collaboration with the SLOfit research group of the Faculty of Sport of the University of Ljubljana, within the Horizon Europe program, is starting to develop an innovative solution that would enable better prediction and drastic reduction of the risk of developing chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs; e.g. cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, various forms of cancer) with the help of artificial intelligence.
The project “AI-based long-term health risk evaluation for driving behaviour change strategies in children and youth” with the acronym SmartCHANGE will focus on developing more effective prediction of NCDs in children and adolescents in their adulthood. The precursors for these are already present in adolescence, but are not necessarily detectable with current methods of diagnosis.
The researchers will use advanced technologies and innovative approaches. With artificial intelligence tools, they will develop models on multiple databases of 24-hour behavioral patterns, physical fitness, biomarkers and NCD incidence, which will be able to forecast their risk of morbidity in adulthood as accurately as possible for children and adolescents. To this end, they will develop two applications: one for health professionals and one for citizens. The purpose of both will be to display health risks, broken down by risk factors, and recommended behavior changes to reduce them, in a way that is appropriate for a specific target group.
The developed solution will be validated with a proof-of-concept study, which will take place in four countries, involving different living environments, from family, school, primary and integrated care, and will be supported by dissemination and communication activities, specially tailored to selected target groups. One of these environments will also be in Slovenia and will be implemented within the SLOfit system. With the help of such a designed scientific advancement, we will enable all SLOfit users to better understand the development of NCD risks, significantly change the ways of coping with them and thus reduce the costs they cause in the health fund, while improving productivity and quality of life of people.