Open Source Clinical Portal to Integrate Care Processes and Research

Organisations: Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, A.O. Ospedale Niguarda Ca'Granda, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Carlo Besta, Milan, Italy

Authors: Nicola Restifo, Paolo Locatelli, Giuseppe Brazzoli

Presenting Author: Paolo Locatelli

This project draws on experience with an open-source/open architecture clinical portal for HIS access and seeks to become a reference case of software reuse within the Italian healthcare environment. The portal covers most features of an EHR. Alongside compliance with syntactic and semantic standards, parameterisation of new vocabularies and system modularisation, it allows networking of diagnostic subsystems and digitalising of information streams between clinical processes. The unifying of clinical and administrative patient data, in turn, enables physician decision support.

Company Information: not available

ICT System to Support Healthcare Logistics in Friuli Venezia Giulia Region

Organisation: Insiel S.p.A., Italy

Authors: Paolo Forza, Margherita Forcolin, Alessandra Nassivera

Presenting Author: Giuliana Beltrame

This project creates an end-to-end logistics platform for managing the pharmaceutical and medical devices supply chain in Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. The project has proceeded in two phases: firstly, to integrate warehouse and stock management, along with the procurement and delivery of the goods to local health authorities using a standardised format; secondly, to monitor and regulate all aspects after the arrival of a product (traceability from warehouse to the final patient, verification of patient-to-drug association, stock control in hospital wards, etc).

Company Information: not available

Electronic Staff Record (ESR)

Organisation: McKesson, United Kingdom

Authors: Melanie Thorpe Smith, Frank Rutley

Presenting Author: Frank Rutley

In April 2008, McKesson successfully completed the implementation of the NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) – the world’s largest single integrated HR and payroll system. Based on Oracle HRMS, ESR replaced the NHS’s 67 different systems with a single, national solution to modernise HR processes, improve administrative efficiency, provide accurate strategic information, and empower every member of staff. The challenges of rolling out ESR to 586 organisations and 1.4 million users made this one of the most ambitious and complex IT projects ever tackled.

Company Information: McKesson

OLDES - An Affordable and Customisable Telecardiology System

Organisation: ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Belgium

Authors: Marco Carulli, Massimo Busuoli

Presenting Author: Sebastien Rousseaux

An ageing population is considered to be one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare financing and delivery in Europe. E-Health has long been seen as offering at least some solutions. But not all old people are the same. Neither are the diseases. Nor are the clinical conditions of each specific disease. The challenge is to fine-tune e-health offerings, and do this cost-effectively. The EU-funded “Older People’s e-Services at Home” (OLDES) project has been deployed in the Czech Republic and Italy.

Company Information: not available

Telecounselling Service for Ischaemic Stroke Management

Organisation: Arsenàl.IT, Italy

Authors: Claudio Saccavini, AndreaRebeschini, Claudio Dario

Presenting Author: Claudio Saccavini

Ischemic stroke is a major cause of death and disability. Intervention via thrombolysis can only be done in a well-organised hospital, due to a high risk of haemorrhage. This teleconsultation project is based on a proven interoperability infrastructure and IHE Integration profiles, as well as consolidated clinical evaluation tools such as as the SITS-MOST protocol and NIH Stroke Scale. It enables sharing of documents and CT images and secure videoconferencing. It aims at a five-fold increase in the number of thrombolysis treatments, within three hours of the start of symptoms.

Company Information: not available

Telehealth in Hull: Saving lives, improving care

Organisation: University of Hull, United Kingdom

Authors: Paul Atkin, David Barrett

Presenting Authors: Paul Atkin

Telemonitoring equipment installed in the homes of heart failure patients allows patients to record pulse, blood pressure and weight in addition to any symptoms on a daily basis. Data are transmitted to a server, and viewed by a telehealth nurse. The system alerts the nurse to any substantial changes in the patient’s condition, who then contacts the patient directly or arranges intervention by the community health team. Over 200 patients have benefited from this service since 2008, and evaluation of the service – one of the first of its kind – suggests that a large number of hospital admissions have been averted.

Company Information: not available

Speech Recognition at St. Olavs Hospital

Organisation: St. Olavs Hospital, SC- Solumsmo Consulting, Norway

Author: Arve-Olav Solumsmo

Presenting Author: Arve-Olav Solumsmo

In the deployment of Speech Recognition at St. Olavs University Hospital in Trondheim Norway, 550 doctors went from training to full use in 15 weeks. 62 medical typists were made redundant and the typing pool was reorganised and moved. All doctors’ notes are now expected to be made using speech recognition. The project reduced the typing pool by 70 percent, makes nearly 20,000 notes per month available as text earlier than before (68 percent of doctors have noticed this improvement), has stabilised the output of discharge notes around 65 percent within one week (stabilised but not increased), while the text of notes has become shorter and more factual (doctors are divided over whether this is positive or not).

Company Information: not available

3-Dimensional Telediagnostic System for Postural Deformities Detection and Monitoring

Organisations: Medical University of Warsaw, Polish Telemedicine Society, Warsaw University of Technology

Authors: Wojciech Michal Glinkowski, Robert Sitnik

Presenting Authors: Wojciech Michal Glinkowski

Detecting postural deformities usually requires on-site subjective examination. This project focuses on telediagnostic analysis of a patient’s trunk surface for detecting and monitoring deformities, based on structured light which measures the body in 3D via projection of a set of raster images on its surface. One unique feature is the system’s ability to operate remotely, carrying out interpretation by telemedicine, and utilising a data warehouse. The system comprises independent modules which deal with measurement, data archiving and analysis, communicating over TCP/IP (with two channels, respectively for text and images). Telerehabilitation videoconferencing services are delivered for patients located in distant schools, outpatient clinics or homes where physiotherapy programmes are unavailable.

Company Information: not available

Integrated automated system for remote diagnosis of patients

Organisation: University Hospital "St. Ekaterina", Bulgaria

Authors: Dr. Kiril Karamfiloff,Gencho Nachev, Julia Djorgova-Makedonska

Presenting Author: Kiril Karamfiloff

This project, at the “St. Ekaterina” University Hospital of Sofia, aims at automated remote diagnostics of cardiovascular patients, with critical, decision-support information transferred in the shortest period after an event. As ambulance crews know, a response within the first so-called ‘golden’ hour of a cardiac event usually makes all the difference. The GPRS-based system transfers key data (ECG, heart rate, Sp02 and blood pressure) in real-time from a patient’s home or another non-medical facility during transport by ambulance, while storing the information at the hospital (as well as relayed data on any actions taken by the ambulance/emergency teams).

Company Information: not available

EUREQUO: Web-Based Disease Registry for Quality Outcomes in Ophthalmic Surgery in Europe

Organisation: International Ophthalmic Technology Association (IOTA), Germany

Authors: Rainer Waedlich

Presenting Authors: Frank Diesterbeck and Ines Ockenfels

Cataracts and refractive surgery are not only the most frequent interventions in the world, but also have a perceptibly high impact on the patients’ quality of life. EUREQUO seeks continuous improvement in treatment, via interconnection of 18 European registries reporting clinical outcomes in standardised templates. This, in turn, permits exchange of best practices between practitioners on the basis of local, regional or pan-European comparisons. The next step is the development of evidence-based European Quality Guidelines. The project also promises replicability for other practices.

Company Information: not available

System Feedback: If You Do Not Learn from Your Mistakes, You Are Doomed to Repeat Them (Santa Yana, 1863-1952)

Organisation: Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Authors: Nina Margareta Lundberg, Erik Jensen

Presenting Author: Nina Margareta Lundberg

Medicine lags behind safety cultures in other walks of life, e.g. aviation, in applying a systems approach to error. An ICT technology, System Feedback, has been developed and used since 2002 for automatic radiological discrepancy detection, independent of local RIS and PACS vendors, providing feedback within and between sites. In turn, the project has led to new ideas from clinicians about functionalities needed to support daily learning and teamwork. In spite of challenges (such as the subjective nature of feedback and the design of a diagnostic error scale), these have been implemented in an iterative process over time, resulting in both continuous learning and knowledge sharing, as well as greater patient safety.

Company information: not available