Development and Testing of Tools to Stratify Prognosis of Older Patients with Frailty in Different Clinical Settings

Maintaining functional independence with advancing age is an important goal for individuals and society. Older people with frailty are at risk of adverse outcomes, including loss of independence. Thus, identification of frail older persons and, more broadly, prognostic stratification of older persons is essential in order to guide clinical decision-making and to apply appropriate interventions in all clinical settings, either in urgent or subacute-chronic situations, with the ultimate goals of preventing or postponing disability. The evaluation of the Silver Code effectiveness in improving clinical outcomes of frail older persons accessing the emergency department is a first research area. A second area of research activity is the prognostic stratification of frail older persons in an outpatient clinic setting, with the aim of integrating more conventional approaches (Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment and Short Physical Performance Battery) with data provided by wearable devices for automatic assessment of physical performance. The two research venues have the common scope of improving our ability to understand factors leading to frailty and from frailty to poor health outcomes in older persons.