DigiRehab: Empowering seniors to stay active with data-driven rehabilitation (ACE Pilot 2025)

Through the ACE project, DigiRehab is piloting its DigiDetect tool in Höganäs Municipality, Sweden. The AI-driven system helps staff identify seniors at the highest risk of falls or decline, enabling more targeted interventions and optimising preventive care. By integrating digital training with data insights, DigiRehab aims to enhance physical function, reduce dependency on homecare services, and increase self-reliance among the elderly.

We spoke with Daniel Grundström Ibsen, Country Manager Sweden at DigiRehab, about the inspiration behind the solution, the challenges of bringing digital rehabilitation to municipal care, and how the ACE project is helping the company refine and expand its impact across Europe.

DGI: DigiRehab provides training concepts for municipalities with a focus on value creation, implementation, and data-driven methods. With our concept, municipalities can help the elderly become more active, more independent, and achieve the goals they set for themselves. Some older adults simply want to maintain their current activity level, while others aim to improve and try new things.

Municipal staff carry out screenings with citizens, and through this process, our solutions automatically generate a functional strength training programme based on mobilisation. Staff then supervise the citizens in exercise sessions twice a week for 20–30 minutes over a 12-week period, providing the support required.

To determine which citizens should begin, particularly those with the greatest needs, the highest risk of falls, and who will benefit most from training and other preventive interventions, we use DigiDetect. This tool produces a prioritised list, giving staff an effective method for selecting and including citizens in appropriate interventions.

DGI: The collaboration started when my colleague added our information to the ACE Community Platform. Linda Macke from Höganäs, Sweden, contacted my colleague, who then forwarded the message to me. After a demo and several meetings, we began working together in early 2025.

DGI: We hope to help Höganäs Municipality make its inclusion and selection methods easier and more targeted, and to make preventive work in general more effective. Through ACE, we have had the opportunity to test and work with different types of adaptations, which are necessary for DigiDetect to function properly and present relevant information. Without this early clinical work through ACE, we would not be able to use DigiDetect in municipalities.

The most important questions concern what we can do with DigiDetect in terms of GDPR regulations in Sweden and how to export the right data from the municipality to the AI tool.

DGI: When we started 10 years ago, the first version of everyday rehabilitation in home care in Denmark was, as we saw it, losing ground. Physiotherapists disappeared from the interdisciplinary teams, perhaps because training elderly citizens had become too monotonous and not sufficiently challenging for the therapists, and along with them, much of the basic physical training quietly disappeared.

To address this, we built a tool to support the part of the training where the therapist could just as well be digital - figuratively “under the arm” of another professional - instead of physically present in the room.

DGI: We automatically collect data on every training course completed, providing us with detailed knowledge of the exact effects on the elderly and the homecare services that support them.

To date, more than 25,000 people have completed a training programme, 74.5% of whom have become more self-sufficient, as measured by the ten functional ability tests (known in Denmark as Fælles Sprog III), which they undergo every four weeks during training. They show particular improvement in areas such as mobility and personal hygiene (for example, toilet visits).

On average, 76.1% of participants achieve a better level of physical function -specifically, an average improvement of 29.7% - as measured by objective tests such as gait speed, TUG, 30STS, and Berg’s Balance Scale.

Consequently, 73.2% require less homecare, with an average accumulated reduction of 23.8 hours (compared with their own baseline and 12 months ahead). This stands in stark contrast to the zero-point analyses we carry out annually for each municipality, which show an average increase of 64.9 accumulated hours in the year prior to commencing training.

DGI: In Sweden and Denmark, the methods for incorporating training into homecare have been a challenge, as well as finding time for training, since homecare staff have many other responsibilities during their working day. Another key issue is determining who should conduct the screenings - whether it should be physiotherapists, or whether assistant nurses can carry out screenings and plan the training programmes themselves.

DGI: Working with DigiRehab’s solutions, we have created some good methods, in our implementations, that we teach the municipalities. Like, how to find citizens who should start a training program. But these processes could and should be much more effective, specific and prioritised and in these cases, we will get a lot of help from DigiDetect. 

Through working with DigiRehab’s solutions, we have developed effective methods that we now teach to municipalities. For example, how to identify citizens who should start a training programme. However, these processes could and should be much more efficient, specific, and prioritised - and in these cases, DigiDetect will provide valuable support.

DGI: Yes, the ACE Community Platform has helped us identify the adaptations that both we and the municipalities – in this case, Höganäs – need to make to improve development and working processes when using DigiDetect. It’s much easier and more engaging for municipalities to join projects that are free of charge and part of something larger than a simple municipality–company collaboration.