Marko Jordan, Nina Reščič, Sebastjan Kramar, Marcel Založnik and Mitja Luštrek

Abstract
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have become a significant
public health challenge in developed countries, driven by common risk factors such as obesity, low physical activity, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. Early childhood and adolescence are
crucial for establishing healthy behaviours, and early intervention can play a crucial role in preventing or delaying the onset of NCDs later in life. However, current tools for identifying highrisk individuals are primarily designed for adults, which results in missed early detection opportunities in younger populations. The SmartCHANGE project (https://smart-change.eu/) seeks to bridge this gap by developing reliable AI tools that assess risk factors in children and adolescents as accurately as possible while promoting optimized risk reduction strategies. In developing the risk assessment tool, we addressed the challenge of merging diverse datasets, predicting missing data to create longitudinal datasets, implementing existing validated models for diabetes (QxMD) and cardiovascular disease (SCORE2), and
ultimately creating a simple online application to demonstrate the functionality of the developed risk tool.