ROOMMATE Project - Work description

The project’s management focuses on ensuring smooth coordination, keeping track of scientific and technical progress, and aligning all tasks with the set goals while making the best use of resources and budgets. It manages deliverables, ensures compliance with legal and financial rules, and addresses administrative needs. Intellectual property is handled through well-defined policies, monitoring background and new IP, and securing proper usage rights. Ethics and data privacy are key priorities, with guidelines developed to meet EU regulations, safeguarding participants’ privacy and security throughout the project.

The project takes a user-centered approach to design and development, beginning with a combination of methods like bibliographic research, focus groups, and interviews to analyze user needs. These insights are turned into clear, measurable system requirements to guide the technology’s development. Stakeholder analysis and co-design sessions help refine user journeys and service models, ensuring they match real-world expectations. Public involvement is a priority, using structured methods to empower vulnerable patients as active decision-makers. Living labs bring end-users into the process, testing usability and acceptance while also creating user guides and training materials for both patients and healthcare professionals.

The project is centered on creating an advanced system architecture that uses edge computing strategies to ensure efficient resource distribution and reliable data management. Robotic systems and VR-based training environments are being co-designed to meet stakeholders’ needs, enhancing ergonomics, usability, and sustainability. The integrated system includes unified identity management, data integration through cloud services, and a centralized user interface, all with a focus on interoperability and reliability. Tailored algorithms are developed to track fine motor and body movements, refined through lab testing to ensure precision. Ongoing technical support during testing drives iterative improvements based on user feedback.

The project ensures ethical compliance by establishing experimental methodologies, creating recruitment plans, and securing ethics approvals. A detailed protocol is developed for the Cohort Multiple Randomised Controlled Trial (cmRCT) to assess ROOMMATE’s impact on users’ quality of life, functional progress, and social participation, using both clinical and technology-based metrics. Ongoing user involvement helps refine the design, tackling usability and ergonomic challenges, with feedback driving system improvements. Data analysis relies on robust statistical methods, producing scientific reports that detail methodologies, findings, and interpretations, ensuring results are effectively shared through indexed journals.

The project establishes an impact assessment framework with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure ROOMMATE's benefits. Societal impact is analyzed through a forecasted Social Return on Investment (SROI), refined via stakeholder workshops and updated with clinical trial data. Outcomes and evidence generation focus on both quantitative and qualitative KPIs, assessing socio-economic and SROI dimensions during pilot phases. Innovations in rehabilitation processes will be documented, highlighting changes in daily practices. Stakeholder engagement ensures continuity of results, while a detailed dissemination and exploitation plan promotes knowledge sharing, IPR management, and the potential for long-term application of outcomes.