Context
Across Europe, demographic change is accelerating: the number of older citizens is increasing rapidly, while the health and social care workforce is shrinking. As healthy life years stagnate or decline, older citizens are living longer but with more years of functional limitations, including reduced physical function, quality of life, and independence. This places pressure on municipalities responsible for delivering user-centred services under workforce and financial constraints.
Traditional preventive approaches rely primarily on age-based eligibility and professional intuition, often weakened by fragmented information on the citizen health status and needs. These models often lack systematic methods to identify older citizens that may benefit from preventive action plans, which can lead to inefficient use of resources and leave vulnerable citizens undetected until functional decline has progressed.
Municipalities therefore require data-driven methods that strengthen foresight, improve prioritisation, and enable earlier, needs-based interventions.
WIPP360 responds directly to this need by transforming validated health indicators into a digital screening and automated triage that predicts risk trajectories and identifies older citizens most likely to benefit from preventive support. In doing so, WIPP360 enhances user-centred service delivery at the local level, strengthens data-driven decision-making, and enables more efficient allocation of scarce municipal resources.
Objectives
WIPP360 aims to create a data‑driven, user‑centred model that enables municipalities in identifying older adults at risk of functional loss, reduced quality of life, dependence, and future need for healthcare services. Existing preventive home visit schemes in Danish municipalities have traditionally been age‑based, a practice whose effectiveness remains unclear. Evidence shows that early detection is essential for maintaining and improving physical function, independent living, and improving healthy life years, thereby reducing future service demand; therefore, WIPP360 replaces age‑based selection with an evidence-based, scalable model.
WIPP360 converts evidence‑based health indicators into a digital screening model that automatically stratifies citizens into three risk categories through an algorithm; (i) red/high risk = immediate need of healthcare professional preventive home visit; yellow/moderate risk = guidance towards preventive support; green/low-risk – support to strengthen self-management guidelines. This structured stratification enables municipalities to (i) identify older citizens with risk factors strongly linked to functional loss, declining quality of life, dependence, and future need for healthcare services and (ii) improve distribution of limited workforce resources towards those with the highest risk and need. Further objectives include increasing uptake of preventive home visits among high‑risk citizens, improving service quality through better‑prepared consultations, and strengthening equity by identifying otherwise ‘invisible’ vulnerable older adults, including non‑digital citizens.
Implementation
WIPP360 was established through the European Interreg5a‑funded WIPP project as a knowledge and implementation network designed to translate research findings into data‑driven screening and a triage model for municipal preventive services. WIPP360 focused on creating a cross‑municipal governance structure capable of developing, testing, and integrating a digital model into everyday practice. Slagelse Municipality, Middelfart Municipality, and University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitet – SDU) formed the founding partnership and assumed responsibility for management, coordination, and methodological development.
Until 2023, WIPP360 operated as a formal project network with signed cooperation agreements. The governance structure consisted of a steering group and a practitioner forum involving frontline staff from participating municipalities. Staff resources were provided through allocated working hours from municipal prevention teams, development consultants, and SDU researchers, with no dedicated budget and implementation relying on in‑kind staff contributions.
Since 2024, WIPP360 has continued as an open, informal implementation network coordinated by the three founding partners. Municipalities using the model are invited annually to share experiences and suggest operational adjustments and data analysis. This ensures continuous refinement, strong end‑user involvement, and collective ownership across participating municipalities and healthcare professionals. Communication and stakeholder engagement take place through workshops, cross‑municipal meetings, and shared guidance materials, supporting coherent implementation and ongoing improvement.