Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a highly prevalent chronic condition. While COPD is a lung disease, it is mainly the exacerbations and extrapulmonary comorbidities which affect the quality of life, health care costs, and prognosis. The optimal COPD treatment needs to focus on both the characteristics and consequences of the lung disease itself and the diagnosis and treatment of comorbidities. While the severity of lung function impairment is routinely assessed, the exacerbations, the associated comorbidities and limitations in daily life are still significantly underestimated. A personalized approach to COPD management is needed to specifically address the disease, prevent exacerbations, and mitigate its comorbidities to obtain a positive impact on patient health and quality of life. TOLIFE will clinically validate an artificial intelligence (AI) solution to process daily life patient data captured by unobtrusive sensors to enable optimised personalised treatment, assessment of health outcomes and improved quality of life in COPD patients. The TOLIFE approach to COPD management, targeted to predict and mitigate exacerbations and continuously assess the health outcomes, has the potential to reduce mortality, improve health related quality of life and reduce the healthcare costs. TOLIFE will develop and clinically validate an AI-based platform for the early prediction of exacerbations and assessment of the health outcomes. Prediction of exacerbations and assessment of health outcomes will be exploited by clinicians through a patient management tool to perform early and personalized treatment. TOLIFE platform will inform through a disease information tool the patient and caregivers about the patient's health status, the specific treatment plan and lifestyle indications. Two clinical studies will be implemented, one to collect data for AI-tools development and the other to validate the effectiveness of TOLIFE to reduce the risk of exacerbations.

The TOLIFE-HOP project aims to enhance the management and quality of life for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) through the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart sensing technologies. Coordinated by the Università di Pisa, the project brings together an assorted consortium of partners from Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and Greece. The main objective of the project is to develop and clinically validate an AI-based platform that processes patient-specific data from unobtrusive sensors to optimize treatment, predict exacerbations, and assess health outcomes. The project includes a comprehensive validation phase involving multiple clinical sites across Europe. The Thorax Research Foundation (TRF) in Greece will play a crucial role in recruiting a diverse patient population, enhancing the statistical power and generalizability of the AI tools. The methodology emphasizes external validation to ensure the AI tools perform well in real-world scenarios, reducing potential biases and improving accuracy. The inclusion of TRF as a widening partner will amplify the project’s impact by broadening the geographical and clinical diversity of the study. This will enhance the robustness of the AI tools and ensure their applicability across different healthcare systems. The project aims to influence future research and innovation ecosystems, promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration and continuous knowledge exchange.