Ongoing Projects

In Austria, as in many other countries, the older population continues to grow. Often elderly people prefer staying in their own homes for as long as they can, and only move into a nursing home at a later stage in their lives or only if need be. However, to respond to this important and understandable request for independence, family members and informal caregivers have to take on challenging responsibilities. Our project aims to support these individuals in home care for elderly people.

Strengthening the health literacy of the population and creating a sustainable health care system that is oriented towards the needs of patients are central building blocks for the improvement of the national health care system in Austria. In order to involve patients in the treatment process, a holistic approach to health care from prevention to therapy and aftercare is needed in addition to strengthening general health literacy. Furthermore, patient-centred care requires improved interdisciplinary collaboration between physicians, therapists, nurses and other medical professionals.

Differential analysis indicates that social inequality leads to health inequality and poverty is considered a co-founder in many health care settings. This project aims to present the impact of material deprivation on maternal and neonatal obstetric outcomes.

The diagnosis of interstitial lung disease (ILD) due to its complex pathologic mechanisms and similar clinical features is quite difficult to achieve. A possible approach to track local changes in lung tissue can be radiological imaging, commonly through high resolution computed tomography (HRCT). However, due to the complex character of ILDs, results from HRCT are limited because of the occurrence of similar radiological features and the lack of defining exposed tissue caused by inflammation.

Due to their nutritional content in macronutrients (carbohydrates, lipids and proteins) and micronutrients (such as the comparatively high contents in vitamins and minerals) plant-based foods play an essential role for human nutrition. In addition, plants also contain non-nutritive compounds such as fibres and secondary plant substances (SPS). SPS can be credited with health-promoting properties which have a positive effect on metabolic processes.

People with dementia often develop problems to communicate with other people. Contacts with domestic pets, however, are often less complicated for them. For this reason, pets are employed to stimulate social interaction and well-being. If this is not allowed by the given institutional arrangements, robotic pets can be used instead. At present only little information is available on the reactions of persons concerned as well as on what to consider when using robotic pets with dementia patients.

In Austria, nursing predominantly takes place at home. Mainly relatives or informal caregivers working for agencies which provide personal assistance are involved. Professional nurses and medical specialists are often contacted at a very late stage. This leaves both family and informal caregivers with a variety of challenges.

Even though increasing digitalisation reduces handwriting activities, the intensive use of a handwriting tool can lead to problems in the hand or finger areas. Since these problems are often induced by too much pressure and excessive forces during the handwriting process, an ideal design shall help in reducing them. Such an innovative design will be investigated in a cooperative study with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

While the maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in clinical and home births were analysed in a wide variety of studies, the data on maternal and neonatal outcomes of births, which are needed to be transferred from a home-birth setting into a clinical setting is poorly prepared and severely limited. The analysis of outcome quality after transferred home births provides important information on the process quality of extramural obstetric care.

According to the WHO, non-communicable diseases such as chronic heart and lung diseases, insult, cancer, diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, accounted for around 40 million deaths worldwide in 2015, which is around 70% of the total number of deaths.

Early detection of language development disorders and a timely delivery of appropriate measures derived therefrom can prevent the secondary consequences of language learning disorders. In particular, phonologically delayed disorders, can have an impact on the development of literacy and placing the child at risk for dyslexia. Due to the high demand for speech therapy, however, many children wait up to 4 months before therapy can be started.