UPRC Coordinating COMFORTage

UPRC Coordinating COMFORTage: Enabling a European Vision for Healthy Ageing through Innovation and Integration

The University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC) serves as the coordinator of COMFORTage, a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that brings together 38 organizations from 18 countries to tackle the urgent challenges of ageing in Europe. Running from January 2024 to December 2027, COMFORTage is supported by €17.6 million in EU funding and aims to build a robust, community-based framework for the prevention, monitoring, and personalized management of age-related diseases, with a focus on dementia and frailty.

In an era marked by demographic shifts and increasing pressure on healthcare systems, COMFORTage introduces a proactive, interdisciplinary approach to ageing. Its goal is to develop people-centric, integrated solutions that leverage advances in artificial intelligence, digital health, and social innovation. This includes novel care models, personalized recommendations, and ethical, technology-enabled interventions grounded in clinical and societal needs.

Scientific and Technological Ambition

COMFORTage is organized around a holistic vision of healthcare, integrating innovations across four main domains:

• Medical and clinical research: development of individualized risk assessment tools, integration of multimodal clinical data, and deployment of evidence-based Health Technology Assessment (HTA) frameworks.
• Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twins: implementation of explainable, secure, and adaptive AI models for personalized prevention and decision support, including virtual assistive agents and patient-specific digital twins.
• Smart environments and data ecosystems: utilization of Smart Homes, wearables, robotics, and Living Labs to create testbeds for real-world validation and continuous feedback loops.
• Social co-creation and ethics: engaging patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and communities in co-design processes to ensure usability, trust, and social inclusion.

A cornerstone of the project is the design of Holistic Health Records (HHRs)—structured, semantically interoperable datasets that integrate information from biobanks, EHRs, mobile sensors, social contexts, and observational studies to support precision ageing interventions.

UPRC’s Role as Project Coordinator

The University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC) facilitates the research activities of the members of the University of Piraeus in several different programmes and initiatives. In this context, the Department of Digital Systems (through UPRC) has been actively involved and coordinated a significant number of: (i) EU funded R&D projects, (ii) National projects funded by the Greek Ministry of Development and the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, and (iii) Projects developed in collaboration with enterprises (both international and national). The UPRC team that participates in COMFORTage focuses on (i) managerial and administrative aspects (as Coordinator), and on (ii) research and development activities in various areas of the wider field of eHealth, including healthcare information systems, personal health records, healthcare systems security, and knowledge management in healthcare among others. With regard to the latter, UPRC team brings significant expertise and knowledge with respect to three main axes: (i) electronic health records and health informatics, (ii) data management and exploitation, (iii) AI-based models, libraries and Patient Digital twins. Moreover, UPRC plays a central role in ensuring the smooth and effective implementation of the project. As coordinator, UPRC manages the overall orchestration of project activities, including:

• Administrative and financial coordination: overseeing compliance with Horizon Europe rules, managing budget allocation, and preparing periodic reporting.
• Ethical and legal governance: ensuring data protection, ethical research practices, and alignment with regulations such as GDPR and the proposed EU AI Act.
• Internal and external communication: facilitating collaboration between partners and maintaining communication with the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA).

As the coordinating partner, UPRC plays a key role in bringing COMFORTage’s goals to life. By supporting effective collaboration across different countries and areas of expertise, UPRC helps ensure that the project stays both scientifically strong and practically meaningful. The shared vision is clear: building a sustainable, inclusive health ecosystem for older adults—one that’s proactive, ethical, and powered by digital innovation.