Small-scale farming can benefit from the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) to improve crop and soil management and increase yield. However, in order to introduce digital farming in rural areas, related ICT solutions must be viable, seamless and easy to use, since most farmers are not acquainted with technology. With that in mind, this paper proposes an Internet of Things (IoT) sensing platform that provides information on the state of the soil and surrounding environment in terms of pH, moisture, texture, colour, air temperature, and light. This platform is coupled with computer vision to further analyze and understand soil characteristics. Moreover, the platform hardware is housed in a specifically designed robust casing to allow easy assembly, transport, and protection from the deployment environment. To achieve requirements of usability and reproducibility, the architecture of the IoT sensing platform is based on low-cost, off-the-shelf hardware and software modularity, following a do-it-yourself approach and supporting further extension. In-lab validations of the platform were carried out to finetune its components, showing the platform’s potential for application in rural areas by introducing digital farming to small-scale farmers, and help them delivering better produce and increasing income.

Introduction: Frailty increases the risk of poor health outcomes, disability, hospitalization, and death in older adults and affects 7%–12% of the aging population. Secondary impacts of frailty on psychological health and socialization are significant negative contributors to poor outcomes for frail older adults. Method: The My Active and Healthy Aging (My‐AHA) consortium has developed an information and communications technology–based platform to support active and healthy aging through early detection of prefrailty and provision of individually tailored interventions, targeting multidomain risks for frailty across physical activity, cognitive activity, diet and nutrition, sleep, and psychosocial activities. Six hundred adults aged 60 years and older will be recruited to participate in a multinational, multisite 18‐month randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the My‐AHA platform to detect prefrailty and the efficacy of individually tailored interventions to prevent development of clinical frailty in this cohort. A total of 10 centers from Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and Australia will participate in the randomized controlled trial. Results: Pilot testing (Alpha Wave) of the My‐AHA platform and all ancillary systems has been completed with a small group of older adults in Europe with the full randomized controlled trial scheduled to commence in 2018. Discussion: The My‐AHA study will expand the understanding of antecedent risk factors for clinical frailty so as to deliver targeted interventions to adults with prefrailty. Through the use of an information and communications technology platform that can connect with multiple devices within the older adult's own home, the My‐AHA platform is designed to measure an individual's risk factors for frailty across multiple domains and then deliver personalized domain‐specific interventions to the individual. The My‐AHA platform is technology‐agnostic, enabling the integration of new devices and sensor platforms as they emerge.

Diabetic Retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that can cause severe vision impairment or even blindness. The condition is treatable in early stages, but it often progresses asymptomatic and undetected. Once the symptoms become noticeable, damage in the retina might already be permanent, thus many countries have implemented retinal imaging screening programmes for their diabetic population. However, existing screening programmes are not reaching all patients, and Diabetic Retinopathy stands as a leading cause of preventable blindness in the active population. We contend that the existing technological infrastructures and clinical processes may be hindering the coverage of Diabetic Retinopathy screening programmes. This paper presents EyeFundusScopeNEO, a Tele-Ophthalmology system based on a screening information system and a mobile fundus camera, which shall support opportunistic and planned screening in primary care, using cameras that are handheld, non-invasive, avoid drug-induced pupil dilation, are usable by clinicians who are not specialised in Ophthalmology, and that cost a fraction of existing table-top fundus cameras. Preliminary studies indicate the potential of the system to increase the reach of screening programmes and clinical research field trials are under preparation.

The population is getting old, and the use of technology has improved the quality of life of the senior population. This is confirmed by the increasing number of solutions targeting healthy and active ageing. Such solutions keep track of the daily routine of the elderly and combine it with other relevant information (e.g., biosignals, physical activity, social activity, nutrition) to help identify early signs of decline. Caregivers and elders use this information to improve their routine, focusing on improving the current condition. With that in mind, we have developed a software platform to support My-AHA, which is composed of a multi-platform middleware, a decision support system (DSS), and a dashboard. The middleware seamlessly merges data coming from multiple platforms targeting health and active ageing, the DSS performs an intelligent computation on top of the collected data, and the dashboard provides a user’s interaction with the whole system. To show the potential of the proposed My-AHA software platform, we introduce the My Personal Dashboard web-based application over a frailty use case to illustrate how senior well-being can benefit from the use of technology.