Lowering the number of dependent elderly people in the future is one of the economic and human challenges of our societies.

The WHO ICOPE program was created to meet this need. It is a public health integrated care program for the elderly (from the age of 60) that requires the support and participation of professionals from the health, medico-social and social sectors as well as decision-makers for its implementation. 

The ICOPE screening tool (1) in Step 1, proposed by WHO is a simple tool, which can be used in the community and primary care settings, after training, by health and social care workers who are not necessarily medical doctors. This tool can also be used for the follow-up of people’s functions.. It is divided into 5 steps: 

  • Step 1 which is a screening/testing in search of decline of the intrinsic capacity,
  • Step 2 which is specialized and person-centered assessment in primary care,
  • Step 3 which is the design of a personalized person-centered care plan in an integrated approach,
  • Step 4 which is the implementation of the pathway and the monitoring of the care plan with links to specialized geriatric care
  • Step 5 which is the integration of and the support of caregivers . *

*Abstract of the article : Integrated Care for Older People and the Implementation in the INSPIRE Study in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease (JPAD), C. Takeda, S. Guyonnet Y. Sumi, B. Vellas, I. Ajauro de Carvalho.

As the Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization for Fragility, Clinical Research and Geriatric Training, the Toulouse University Hospital Gérontopôle is in charge of implementing the ICOPE programme in the Occitania region as a pilot for the rest of France. It aims to assess 200,000 seniors within 5 years and promote healthy aging through digital medicine. It uses the ICOPE application launched by the WHO on October 1, 2019, which helps a health professional or a caregiver to carry out a screening of an individual’s intrinsic capacity. This step is considered as step 1 of the ICOPE program.

For this purpose, the Gérontopôle has also worked on the development of two digital tools:

the ICOPE MONITOR application, adapted to the monitoring of individual’s functions every 4 months to detect possible changes é declines. Its originality is to generate alerts to health professionals in case of a functional decline. The second one, the chatbot called ICOPEBOT allowing to do the same than the application but from an internet page (on a home computer for instance). It will guide its users through the Step 1 evaluation step by step.

If you are interested in knowing more about these ICOPE tools and how to use them, please click here.