HealthManagement, Volume 7 - Issue 1, 2012 HIT

Ágora - Lightweight EHR Viewer 

The EHR viewer (Ágora) in the Murcia Health Service displays real-time patient clinical information that is distributed across diverse and heterogeneous data sources in less than three seconds. Acting as mediator between its various information systems, Ágora simulates data centralisation without large-scale data storage. Ágora is the first project that does not attempt major software overhaul across the health enterprise, only collecting the pointer of the information source in the departmental applications.


The benefits of Ágora have already been demonstrated in the aftermath of the earthquake that took place 11 May, 2011 in Lorca, Spain during which emergency workers had patient data available while attending the wounded.

 

GNU Health : Benefits of Free Software in Public Health

GNU Health is a Free, modular, and highly scalable Health and Hospital Information System with the three functionalities: Electronic Medical Record (EMR); Hospital Information System (HIS); and Health Information System. The project’s originality lies in how it incorporates the human factor in health informatics. Combines state-of-the-art technology (Genetics, LIMS..) and family medicine (socioeconomics, lifestyle, nutrition... ).


GNU Health has been a tremendous success. The United Nations (UNUIIGH) is using it to teach health professionals and to implement it in health centres all over the world.

 

Veneto-Escape Project 

Veneto ESCAPE project deploys the digitalisation of the clinical document lifecycle, matching international standards as HL7, LOINC and focusing on IHE and W3C guidelines, and achieves long term flexibility and scalability integration of several systems placed all over the region.


A secured availability of the clinical reports on platforms allows patients to access their record avoiding unnecessary travels, reducing waiting times and helping the LHAs to save money. The project represents a means for digital lifecycle management and methodological clinical pathways standardisation through more targeted patient records. No matter where the solution is to be placed, it will bring the basis of the healthcare digital revolution.

 

Schizophrenia Prediction: Itarepes System 

With the ITAREPS system patients have standard mobile phones capable of sending sms messages on a weekly basis. The communication server, which stores the patients’ and observers’ messages also determines whether an alert email message will be sent to the outpatient psychiatrist. To achieve the decision, various machine learning tools and algorithms are used.


The patients participating in the ITAREPS system have 70 percent hospitalisation rate reduction, thus significantly improving patient life quality and at the same time reducing financial costs. Outpatient psychiatrists have more frequent contact with the patients through the sms messages and have a better overview of patients health status. The project can save about 16 million euro per year in the Czech Republic, only. This means it saves 2,000 euro per patient per year.

 

The European Project Renewing Health 

The telemonitoring services for chronic diseases provided in Veneto allow the remote control of chronic patients using Personal Health Systems, connecting the patient with all the main actors in the healthcare system. By using wearable biomedical devices at home, patients measure clinical parameters and transmit them to an external telemonitoring centre, where trained operators keep information under control.


The European Project RENEWING HEALTH will allow for the first time a multidisciplinary assessment of large-scale telemonitoring services, facing different issues: Organisational, economical, clinical, patients’ and professionals’ perspective. The Project will give multidisciplinary evidence on the performance of the telemonitoring services and consequently encourage their further deployment in other European regions. The results obtained will enable the improvement of the existing pilot applications, scaling them up and evolving them into real life services.

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