Gerontology and geriatrics, care of elderly patients are studied at the Department by students and residents of the Faculty of Medicine, students of Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy programmes of the Faculty of Nursing, Master’s degree students of Art Therapy, students of Oral Hygiene programme of the Faculty of Odontology. The Department of Geriatrics offers CPD courses for family doctors, internal medicine doctors, and geriatricians. The residency programme provides training to prospective geriatricians. The staff of the Department have published 5 textbooks on geriatrics for the students of the Faculties of Medicine and Nursing. An educational CD-ROM with training materials on dementia was released.
The Department of Geriatrics currently conducts work under a research project on “Prevention, diagnosis, and management of health disorders in the elderly using medical and technological approach”.
Research on clinical geriatrics, including early diagnosis of diseases in the elderly, functional disorders and their correction, quality of life, dementia, nutrition in the elderly, and gerontotechnology.
Research projects
- International project “qEEG in Diagnosis of Dementia using Statistical Pattern Recognition”, involving researchers from Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Lithuania, collaborating through the Nordic Network in Dementia Diagnostics.
- ADVANTAGE (Managing Frailty. A comprehensive approach to promote a disability-free advanced age in Europe: the ADVANTAGE initiative was a joint action programme for addressing frailty prevention in the elderly, funded under the European Union’s Third Health Programme (2014–2020, Horizon 2020). The project involved 40 different organisations from 22 EU countries. The ADVANTAGE project developed a common approach to the frailty prevention in health and social care services, promoting consensus among European Member States, and provided a common framework for the treatment of the elderly diagnosed with or at risk of developing frailty. For more information please follow this link.
- LSMU-KTU project “Griūtis” to study the development and use of a fall detector.
- National Healthy Ageing Science Programme project (with KTU) “Smart Gerontechnology for Healthy Ageing” (iGeronTech) (2016–1018). The project aimed at enabling ageing in place for the elderly using technology.
- The LSMU-KTU project “Sotis” to develop supplements specifically designed for the elderly.
- The GerAsMaistas project (LSMU-KTU, 2019) has developed food product of creamy texture enriched with essential nutrients (proteins, unsaturated fats, vitamins, minerals) intended specifically for the nutritional needs of the elderly.
- Based on the results of the Gerimodis project (LSMU-KTU, 2020), a risk assessment model for geriatric patients was developed and a mock-up was implemented to test the model (5 TPL).
- Following additional research and development activities under the ProtoArtis project (LSMU-KTU, 2021), an innovative decision support system was developed to provide recommendations to geriatricians, family doctors or other medical staff (even those without prior experience) to assist them in the patient’s health risk (syndrome) assessment in view of the symptoms and factors identified and validated during the medical practice.
- Project conducted in collaboration with KTU and funded by the Research Council of Lithuania: Value-based and Personalized Telehealth Business Model Innovation Tools to Mitigate the Consequences of Covid-19 Pandemic. TeleCareBMI.
- Project with the Public Enterprise “Social Art Projects” (Socialiniai meno projektai), an EEA Financial Mechanism-funded project Towards a Dementia Strategy: Situation Analysis and Public Awareness.
- Nordic Network in Dementia Diagnostics
- interRAI collaborative network