OPKO-EU: A Digital Biopsychosocial Intervention for Fracture Prevention and Treatment Adherence in Osteoporosis

Project Concept & The Challenge

Osteoporosis care traditionally focuses on pharmacological treatment and physical fracture risk. However, modifiable psychosocial factors—such as negative illness perceptions, medication concerns, emotional distress, low self-efficacy, and poor patient–clinician communication—are critical barriers to treatment adherence that receive limited clinical attention. OPKO-EU addresses this crucial gap by targeting postmenopausal women and older adults with a personalised digital behavioural health intervention designed to improve medication adherence, psychosocial adjustment, and fracture prevention behaviours.

The OPKO-EU Innovation

OPKO-EU will scale an existing, validated digital psychoeducation platform from Türkiye into a multilingual, adaptive intervention for diverse European healthcare settings. Guided by Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs)—including illness perceptions, stress, depressive symptoms, and adherence barriers—the platform will deliver dynamically tailored behavioural support.

The intervention will be co-designed with patients and healthcare professionals, featuring evidence-based modules on:

• Understanding osteoporosis, fracture risk, and medication adherence.

• CBT-informed stress management and emotional adjustment.

• Physical activity, fall prevention, and value-based action planning.

• Enhancing effective communication with healthcare providers.

Methodology & Expected Outputs

The project will evaluate usability, acceptability, clinical effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness through a multi-country pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). The expected actionable outputs include:

• A clinically validated, multilingual, and interoperable digital intervention.

• A comprehensive monitoring interface for healthcare professionals.

• Empirical evidence on the psychosocial mechanisms driving treatment adherence.

• A scalable implementation framework for integration into routine European clinical care.

Consortium Needs & Our Role

Istanbul University (Partner Role): We bring robust expertise in clinical health psychology, behavioural medicine, psychometrics, longitudinal evaluation, and clinical implementation, alongside the foundational OPKO digital platform and the capacity to run the Turkish pilot validation.

Expertise Sought: We are actively seeking partners to build a competitive consortium:

• Coordinator: An experienced EU-based institution to lead the Horizon Europe submission.

• Clinical Sites: Osteoporosis, geriatrics, and metabolic bone disease clinics across the EU.

• Tech & Data SMEs: Specialists in digital health interoperability, data analytics, and AI/personalisation.

• Impact Partners: Health economists, implementation scientists, and European patient advocacy organisations.