Dementia Pilot - Cyprus
The Context
Pain assessment in individuals with dementia presents a critical challenge for healthcare systems across Europe. Dementia often impairs verbal communication, making it difficult for patients to express discomfort, which can lead to underdiagnosis and undertreatment of pain. Despite the widespread use of pharmacological analgesics such as NSAIDs and opioids, evidence for their safety and efficacy in this population remains limited, particularly for long-term use. In response, the European Dementia Strategy emphasizes the need for alternative, non-pharmacological approaches, supported by accurate and objective pain assessment tools.
However, current pain evaluation methods are fragmented across institutions and lack standardization, interoperability, and integration with broader digital health infrastructures. To move toward more personalized, evidence-based dementia care, we must enable secure, structured, and harmonized data sharing across systems, borders, and clinical settings.
Our Pilot
In the Cyprus dementia pilot, we aim to demonstrate how the Regional Smart Health Data Space (RSHDS) infrastructure can support the collection, structuring, and cross-border integration of real-world data related to pain assessment in individuals with dementia. By embedding this data into a privacy-preserving digital health ecosystem, the pilot serves as a testbed for validating VELES’ architecture, particularly in handling complex, multimodal health data.
The focus is on ensuring interoperability, semantic harmonization, and secure access to data that can inform personalized care decisions.
Benefits
The Cyprus pilot showcases how VELES enables the standardization and secure sharing of sensitive health data, even in complex domains such as dementia care. By leveraging the RSHDS, we facilitate real-time, cross-institutional access to data, empowering clinicians with insights that improve the accuracy and timeliness of pain management strategies. The pilot also contributes to the development of AI-based decision support tools, supports cross-border research collaboration, and reinforces compliance with EU data governance and ethics standards.
Ultimately, this pilot contributes to the VELES mission of building a scalable, interoperable, and sustainable digital health ecosystem in South-East Europe, delivering personalized, data-driven care for vulnerable populations and laying the groundwork for future digital health innovation.
