Founder of the “Inspire” research platform with the University of Toulouse-III and Inserm to help seniors age in good health, the Gérontopôle of the Toulouse University Hospital was the first center to develop the Organization’s Icope program World Health Organization (WHO). This aims to prevent the addiction which will affect 618 million people around 2050, tracking six essential functions: mobility, nutrition, vision, hearing, mood and cognition.

The program begins with a screening questionnaire accessible and digitized on the Icope Monitor mobile application. The mobility test consists of getting up from a chair five times in fourteen seconds. The the elderly can complete the questionnaire on their own, with the help of a conversational robot designed by BOTdesign in Toulouse. The information is saved in a database. In Occitania, 6,000 nurses, physiotherapists, doctors and pharmacists have downloaded the application.

” A revolution “

Launched in early 2020, the program was carried out with 22,200 people aged 60 and over, autonomous and living at home. It continues, the objective being to follow 200,000 people, then to perpetuate it.

After screening, the program includes four steps: an in-depth assessment, a personalized care plan, plan follow-up and community involvement. “It’s a revolution, because for once we are going in the direction of prevention, instead of waiting for the elderly person to fall down the stairs to send to nursing home , welcomes Professor Bruno Vellas, head of the Gérontopôle de Toulouse. The WHO considers that half of the cases of dependency could be eliminated and wants to reduce the number of dependents by 15 million by 2025. In France, this would represent 150,000 fewer dependents, which would avoid opening 1,800 retirement homes. ! »

The Gérontopôle was published in July in the review “Lancet Healthy Longevity” a study on the application of Icope conducted among 10,900 people with an average age of 76 years. 94% of them tested positive with knowledge of sight, hearing, memory, etc., and 958 people (9.3%) reinforced with an in-depth assessment and a care plan. The questionnaire makes it possible to identify weight loss or the need for rehabilitation fairly early on. This follow-up helps fragile people to become robust again rather than sinking.

Sport after 55 and driving after 80

“It is possible to continue doing sports at 55 and driving at 80, because the effect of aging is weaker than we think, says Bruno Vellas. Our experiment shows that the Icope program is feasible and the WHO recommends extending it to the entire population. France was the first country to have digitized it to carry out a mass action and extend it to six regions in September. It is starting to be deployed in Spain and China.

In Occitania, the program is funded by the Regional Health Agency, the regional council and the European Interregional Spain-France-Andorra Programme.

Icope is part of the Gérontopôle’s Inspire research program which aims to identify the biomarkers of aging, to define the “real” biological age of people and to test preventive treatments. The regional council will invest 57 million euros in a geroscience center which could be the hard core of a university hospital institute.