Partners of the Consortium

Region Syddanmark / MedCom International

Project coordinator of the Better Breathing project and field trial leader at the Danish validation site Funen Hospital.

MedCom International, representing Region Syddanmark (RSD) (in English: Region of Southern Denmark), was until the end of 2006 known as the International Office at the Danish Centre for Health Telematics, County of Funen. RSD is a governmental institution and is the result of the merger of 3½ existing counties into one single authority. The regions of Denmark have overall responsibility for the provision of healthcare. RSD is the biggest region in Denmark with 1.2 million inhabitants.

MedCom International is based in Odense, Denmark, and runs several projects and activities under the same management, representing MedCom, Danish regions or municipalities. All the activities have as their focal point the establishment of a market plus implementation of electronic communication in health services. The main activities co-ordinated in the office are Danish as well as international MedCom projects. The European projects all revolve around one or several of the following elements: Telemedicine and eHealth services, infrastructure for telemedicine, and standardisation. In addition to being co-ordinator of the Better Breathing project, MedCom International is leading partner in the Baltic eHealth project part-financed by INTERREG III B as well as in the eTEN project R-Bay which is expected to start in August 2007. MedCom International has ten employees who have backgrounds within healthcare, administration, project management and IT. The project team in Denmark bases its work on Prince2 principles.

The Funen Hospital has five hospital units placed on the island of Funen. The Funen Hospital provides healthcare for 40% (225,000 citizens) of the population on Funen. The hospital covers all specialities – including psychiatry, medicine and surgery. In total the hospital employs 2,500 and has 665 beds. The Funen Hospital is already very active in the implementation of eHealth; it has been heavily involved with GITS and MedCom International in the development of the eCare service that will be implemented in the Better Breathing project – and the Funen Hospital sees this project as the logical way forward to improve the quality of care offered to chronic patients and to optimise healthcare. The Better Breathing project is seen as a service improvement project which will provide proof of concept principles which can be applied in a roll-out in the Region of Southern Denmark.

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NHS Wales Informing Healthcare (Field trial leader at the Welsh validation site, Llandough Hospital)

Informing Healthcare (IHC) is an NHS Wales National Programme to develop new methods, tools and information technologies to transform health services for the people of Wales. The aim is to modernise health service delivery and promote new ways of working through better access to information and knowledge for shared decision making. Informing Healthcare is one of the key enablers for ‘Designed for Life’, the national ten year strategy to deliver world-class health and social care for Wales. The Welsh Assembly’s telehealth activities including the management of the Welsh Health Video Service have recently been integrated into the IHC programme.

The programme will be achieved through a series of healthcare service improvement projects and investment in information communication technologies to create Wales-wide information and infrastructure services. The aim of the programme is to enable health information to be securely shared between the NHS and social care. The right health information will be made available to clinicians and patients wherever care needs to be provided. Current service improvement projects being undertaken in NHS Wales include those relating to long-term conditions such as diabetes. This project will benefit patients with a diagnosis of COPD living in the suburbs of Cardiff and receiving their primary and secondary healthcare from The Vale of Glamorgan Local Health Board and Llandough Hospital respectively. It will contribute towards building a “catalogue of services” available locally for treating and managing patients with particular long term conditions.

Llandough Hospital is a District General Hospital with 480 beds currently in use. The hospital is situated five miles from the centre of Cardiff. All major specialities are represented, providing a range of medical services to the people mainly, but not exclusively, in the west of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.

In addition to standard services offered, the hospital also provides specialist services including cancer surgery, tertiary elective orthopaedics and the Therapeutics & Toxicology Centre. The hospital also provides some services not available at the other major site, such as the Cystic Fibrosis Unit, Diabetic Retinopathy Service and the Sleep Studies Centre.

There is a major academic presence at Llandough Hospital. The Academic Centre houses research laboratories and offices of Professors in Medicine for the Elderly, Clinical Pharmacology, Respiratory Medicine, Community Child Health and Diabetes. The Wound Healing Research Unit, Bone Research Unit and Research Department for Diabetic Medicine, incorporating a Clinical Investigation Unit, are also based at Llandough. Considerable undergraduate and postgraduate teaching takes place and a new Postgraduate Centre was opened in 1998.

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Docobo Ltd.

Docobo Ltd is a UK healthcare solutions provider, involved in the management and prevention of long term conditions. Docobo is established in 2001 from a consortium of clinicians and technologists. Docobo has been in the forefront of development of systems for the management of patients with Long Term Conditions in their own homes.

A range of products and services are provided including the doc@HOME®service for the management of chronic disease and the HealthHUB™ for collecting physiological, quality of life and life style data; data transfer and receipt of messages permit effective and efficient management of patients in their own homes.

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Secretary’s Office for Strategy and Coordination (SEC) of the Ministry of Health of the Government of Catalonia (field trial leader at the Spanish validation site, Hospital Clinic Provincial de Barcelona)

The autonomous region of Catalonia has had full competences in health services since 1981, as part of the decentralised Spanish health system, based on the common principles of universality, equity and gratuity. The central government collects public taxes and social security contributions and transfers the budget to the regions.

The Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya) has developed its own organisational model based on the historical evolution of the Catalan health system. In that context, the Catalan government decided to maintain the weight of the centres created by the civil society and to “limit” the role of the Health Authorities (the Catalan Health Service, SCS) to the management and co-ordination of the existing healthcare resources. Therefore, the Catalan healthcare model establishes the separation of functions, purchasing and providing, based on harmonised agreements and tenders. The Department of Health (Departament de Salut, DS) is also the highest authority for the definition, planning and development of healthcare services in Catalonia, acting as a purchaser of services and defining the guidelines and strategy for health provision. Finally, it is responsible for the promotion and protection of individual and collective health.

The Secretary’s Office for Strategy and Co-ordination (SEC) has the highest responsibility within the DS in establishing planning strategies on healthcare policy in order to reach the highest efficiency possible in all actions, aimed at guaranteeing the right to healthcare protection, evaluating their results, and co-ordinating the educational and research activities in the field of health sciences.

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Hospital Clinic Provincial Barcelona (the Spanish validation site)

HCPB is a public tertiary university hospital based in the Barcelona area. It belongs to a larger corporation (Corporació Sanitària Clínic) that includes two more hospitals (Casa Maternitat and Hospital Sant Joan de Deu), several Primary Care Units (Gesclinic), one Biomedical Research Foundation (IDIBAPS) and two companies devoted to Transplant Services (Criobarna and Transplant Services Foundation). The Hospital Clínic serves an area of 540,000 inhabitants. It has 840 beds and in 1999 dealt with 41,643 inpatients, 400,772 outpatients and 147,577 casualties. With an average length of stay of less than seven days and a complexity rating of 1.99 according to the DRG-All Patient rating version 12.0, the Hospital Clínic is one of the most efficient in the country. In the same reporting year 1999, 18,812 surgical interventions were carried out of which 344 were transplants. The hospital has 3,500 employees and an annual budget of nearly 170 million Euros.

Over recent years, the Respiratory Department has been leading an ambitious project to establish a regional network providing continuous and integrated care for this type of patient based on different applications of Health Telematics. Communications in this network are based on: 1) web applications that facilitate the creation of an information sharing space for effective collaboration among professionals and citizens, 2) use of mobile communications, wireless networks, handheld PCs to favour mobility of professionals and patients and 3) development of educational material supporting these new professional work practices and patients’ empowerment.

Institut Català de la Salut, ICS (The Catalan Institute of Health) will be supporting HCPB. ICS is the main public provider of health services in Catalonia. The ICS delivers health services for 83% of the Catalan citizens (which means more than 5.5 million people). And it covers 40% of health research in Catalonia (more than 1,000 publications in national and international reviews). The ICS is composed of eight hospitals and 470 primary care units located along the whole Catalan territory. The ICS’ hospitals offer 32% of the beds that are available in the Catalan Public Hospital Network (XHUP); three of the five high technology hospitals in Catalonia are from the ICS (Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron, Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge and Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol de Badalona). ICS employs more than 38,000 professionals (primary care 20,000 employees; hospital care 18,000 employees). The ICS’ budget (2006) is 2,300 million euros, a 6.8% growth from last year.

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TB·Solutions (Technological partner)

TB Solutions Advanced Technologies S.L. began its activity in January 1988 with the name Intercomputer, S.A.

At the beginning, the organisation was mainly focused on the processing of bank documents (cheques, receipts, and effects), but, starting from 1990, the organisation explored new activities related to services to banks using proper telecommunication developments based on Videotex and the Internet.

In April 2001, the division of electronic bank solutions forming part of PSINet split from the American multinational to found TB Solutions. TB Solutions quickly became a new trademark thanks to its great experience in electronic banking, the Internet and secure transactions and PKI.

The strong experience of the organisation in the field of file transmission and PKI prompted TB Solutions to enter the healthcare market with advanced solutions (e.g. TraumActiva©) able to rationalise the management of healthcare delivery and thus allow cost savings. TB Solutions is currently involved in a significant number of local, national and international R&D projects.

Among these, TB Solutions managed an IST project (AEQUITAS, contract IST-2000-29569) whose aim it was to validate and demonstrate technologies and architectures related to the trust in the context of large-scale advanced scenarios in business or ordinary life.

Moreover, TB Solutions is participating in other projects which are in the eHealth line: "Healthcare delivery optimisation through telemedicine"; "Linking Health Professionals in Emerging Care Environments" and "Spreading Excellence in Healthcare".

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Medical International Research (MIR) (Technological partner, SME)

MIR is a leading Italian company in the international sectors of reduced dimension diagnostic medical devices for analysis of respiratory function and telemedicine systems for monitoring chronic pathologies. To date, the company is the only one on the world market to have produced a pocket-sized instrument that integrates a tele-spirometer and a tele-oximeter. This product – protected by two pending international patents – was conceived for screening from the doctor’s office and home monitoring of the patient affected by chronic respiratory diseases. MIR Web server is installed in Telecom Italia Web Farm.

MIR has 14 staff members and six collaborators, nearly all of whom are degree educated. It has its own team which projects and develops on-site both hardware and software for every product, and is able to guarantee the maximum support for possible personalised solutions.

The quality of the products is certified by UNI EN ISO 9001/2000 and UNI CEI EN ISO 13485/2002, and in the USA by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration); the accuracy of the product measurements is guaranteed by the American Thoracic Society (ATS), an association of specialists in respiratory diseases which sets the world standards in this sector.

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University Hospital of North Norway (UNN) (Field trial leader in Norway and validation site)

UNN is situated in the city of Tromsø. The hospital has 4,000 employees and serves 72,000 inhabitants. The UNN also covers the Longyearbyen hospital on the island of Svalbard and offers specialist functions to the North Norway Region, which has 462,000 inhabitants. The hospital has a focus on patient treatment, research and development and rehabilitation. The hospital is connected to the Baltic Health Data Network and participates in many European projects including the Baltic eHealth Project.

Since the official opening in 1993, The Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) has been a department of the UNN. Today NST has status as the national competence centre for telemedicine research and development in Norway. In 2002 the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated the NST as its first Collaborating Centre for Telemedicine. The objective of the centre is to contribute to the provision of appropriate, efficient and equitable health services through the implementation of telemedicine. The centre engages in research and development, supplies advisory services on telemedicine, and gathers, produces and disseminates information about telemedicine both nationally and internationally. The primary task is to serve the public Norwegian health service, but the centre aims to serve both public and private sector organisations in Norway and abroad.

The centre participates in international projects and resource groups in general and European collaboration in particular. The centre conducts and participates in feasibility studies and initiates collaboration concerning telemedicine with individual countries as well as associations such as the World Health Organisation and the European Space Agency. As a WHO Collaborating Centre for Telemedicine, the centre uses its extensive national and international network to provide the best advice for those seeking knowledge on telemedicine.

The centre contributes actively to the development and implementation of (cross border) telemedicine and eHealth services, e.g. in the Baltic eHealth project.

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Norut Informasjonsteknologi AS (Norut IT) (Technological partner)

Norut IT is an independent institute for research in the fields of ICT and Earth Observation / Satellite Remote Sensing. Norut IT's main sources of income are research contracts with the EU Framework Programmes, industry, government, the Research Council of Norway, ESA and the Norwegian Space Centre. In 2003, more than 30% of the turnover was generated by international contracts. The goal of Norut IT is to create practical results from research - results with a commercial potential. The results have made Norut IT attractive as a partner in international projects, and in the last five years Norut IT has managed three EU 5FP projects and been partner in two more. In 2001, Norut IT was appointed ESA Expert Support Laboratory by the European Space Agency. Norut’s ICT department carries out net-centric research in the fields of networked multimedia, mobile applications, applications for broadband networks, database technology, peer-to-peer systems, Web technology and distributed GIS systems.

Norut IT started working on telemedicine R&D as early as 1990 and currently collaborates with the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine within the field of personal eHealth services for the home. Together with UNN/NST and Well Diagnostics they developed the ICT technology being used in the Norwegian trial.

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GITS A/S (Global IT-systems) (Technological partner and SME)

GITS A/S (Global IT-systems) is a Danish SME that was founded in 2002. Today it has 50 employees and consists of two departments of which the main office is located in Odense, Denmark

GITS A/S is an innovative and technological company that operates as a supplier to the Danish health sector. It seeks to transform health services for the people of Denmark by developing innovative health care technology. The vision of the company is to modernise the health service by introducing telemedical solutions – especially to its primary segment which is patients suffering from chronic diseases. By combining technology with health services, GITS A/S believes it can offer the patients a better course and thus improve their quality of life. The telemedical solutions are often developed in close collaboration with practicing doctors from the Funen Hospital, thus making sure that the solutions are reliable and perfect.

Please, click here if you wish to see a patient using the patient briefcase.

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