Best Practices (BP) and Trials (TR)

Ongoing Projects

Bepro

Enabling Best Practices for Oncology (IST-2000-25252 BP)
Project demonstrates multi-national oncology network and assesses impact on organisation and efficacy of oncology services. The project consists of 3 phases: set up, medical evaluation, assessment. Results will be disseminated to the relevant European medical community and, when applicable, submitted to standardisation bodies.
BEPRO website

DIAFOOT

Remote Monitoring of Diabetic Foot (IST-2001-33281 TR)
Diabetes Mellitus is being an increasingly problem in European countries with a high impact in the quality of life of some millions of citizens and with severe impact on the economy of national health systems. The general technical objective of the project is to test the use of a remote system for monitoring patients with diabetes mellitus, able of measuring pressures, temperatures and humidities in the feet and sending data to the Hospital for further analysis and, if necessary, action. An additional objective would be the benchmarking with current procedures and techniques, which will allow to re-define the protocol for the treatment of diabetic feet and to propose an operational procedure at general level.

E-SCOPE

Fully Digital Microscopy for routine diagnostics and integration into hospital information workflow (IST-2001-33294 BP)
This last decade, many medical and technological efforts have been made to turn diagnostic pathology into a reliable medical practice taking advantage of multimedia systems for remote diagnostics, image banks, standards for images (DICOM Visible Light), reporting electronic forms, archiving systems and supporting certification and accreditation procedures. Unfortunately, these candidate materials could not be implemented on a large scale because the conventional microscope, as the central standalone imaging system, is still designed as a human viewing apparatus not suitable for the production of standardised digital images as demonstrated by several independent European projects. This e-scope Take-up Action thus aims to make the fully digital microscopes available for routine diagnostic practice with the key advantage of actually incorporating the standards for medical imaging, archiving and communication, in addition to enabling the certification and accreditation procedures set up for by the diagnostic pathology community. Fully digital microscopy could then enable the integration of pathology departments into PACS, HIS and hospital information workflow as it already occurred for the other medical imaging devices and services.

IHELP

Electronic Remote Assistance in the Operating Room (IST-2001-33269 BP)
The iHELP project will utilise state of the art eHealth platforms and methodology in order to define best practices for providing on-line assistance, on a 24h basis across the world, to surgeons using the latest neurosurgery systems in the Operating Room (O.R.) by the engineers who developed these systems, thus ensuring a smooth learning curve of the new technology by the surgeons and a drastic reduction of complications due to equipment intricacies or even to malfunction during an operation. The iHELP service will be integrated to planning & treatment systems already in use for neurosurgery operations. The users of the project will validate this eHealth service within their own operational environment, i.e. the O.R. of the participating clinics. The project aims to conduct controlled, small-scale trials that will create reproducible evidence which will convince future buyers of the importance (in terms of quality and efficiency) of this eHealth system. Quantifiable measures of success will include, among others, the rate of usage of the system, the satisfaction rate of users (the surgeons), the success rate per use of the system and direct benefits in patient welfare (e.g. effect on recovery & survival rates).

PRIDEH

Privacy Enhancement in Data Management in eHealth (IST-2001-32647 TR)
Privacy enhancing technology uses mature cryptographic methods. In spite of that and in the face of increased privacy violation risks due to complex and flexible data flows and the increased need of life data to support evidence based medicine and management decisions, privacy enhancement take-up is slow. PRIDEH starts from experiences gained by its partners (CUSTODIX as supplier and WREN as USER) in the implementation of pseudonymisation services in the pharmaceutical and health domains. The solutions are based on Trusted Third Party provision of privacy services and the incorporation of privacy enhancing modules into application software. PRIDEH will show the feasibility and added value of PET in the health domain. Information needs to be disseminated and feedback gained from relevant groups, such as standardisation, legislative and citizen organisations.

RESHEN

Regional Secure Healthcare Networks (IST-2000-25354 BP)
Demonstration of best practice in secure health care information exchange using PKI and TTP. The object is to develop a business case for security services in health care informatics. Highlights best practice action in the secure communication and information exchange between all levels of participants (primary and secondary healthcare service providers, end-users) in regional healthcare information networks within the regional networks themselves, as well as between different regional networks in Europe. Will draw on previously funded EC RTD projects (total 14).
RESHEN website

SCREEN-TRIAL

The Screening Mammography Soft-Copy Reading Trial (IST-2001-33439 TR)
Every year millions of women have film-based mammograms in the European screening programmes. The new digital mammography and soft-copy reading (SCR) technologies addressed here will have an impact on the radiologists' reviewing process and the medical quality. SCR enables the use of e.g. computer-aided detection, patient e-records and digital image communication. SCR is the key to the integration of Europe ' screening programmes into the EC' s eHealth initiative. The objective is to expedite the up-take of the dedicated high-throughput SCR-system developed in SCREEN (IST-1999-10246). Because of the drastic departure with current reviewing practice, influential reference sites covering a wide range of user profiles are needed to access the broader market for the SCR-system. Technical and scientific support will be provided to "User Demonstration Sites" in Bremen (D), Danderyd (S), Ulrecht (NL) and Tromsö (N) to integrate the SCR-system and to evaluate its medical and economic benefits.

SPIRIT

Priming the Virtuous Spiral for Healthcare: Implementing an Open Source Approach to Accelerate the Uptake and Improvement of Best Practice, Regional Healthcare Network Solutions (IST-2000-26162 BP)
SPIRIT is a pioneering initiative to accelerate the uptake of regional health network solutions. It will establish a self sustaining, profitable, and user driven best practice open source business for healthcare software and other resources. This will enable the implementation, enhancement, and propagation of regional health networks. The project will create a highly collaborative self-sustaining global community of healthcare software developers and healthcare professionals that will share, improve, and create innovative solutions for healthcare. The project will provide freely available resources that will enable better citizen-centred care both in Europe and globally.
SPIRIT website

STEMNET

Information Technology for Stem Cell Transplantation (IST-2000-26117 BP)
Object of this best practice action is to demonstrate best practice in networked stem cell donor databases. The project will facilitate the sharing of European best practice including European standards, good laboratory practice, and quality control of typing procedures with CEE countries. This will result in higher efficiency and quality, shorter waiting times and reduced costs.
STEMNET website

WOMAN II

European Network of Services for women health management (IST-2001-32672 TR)
WOMAN, an EC funded project (1998-2000) created an innovative approach: the combination of a Web Portal and Electronic Patient Record (EPR) application in the women health field. The multilingual portal provides Women and Professionals an easy access to Women health information, focused on menopause; the web EPR allows a European data collection and exchange. The aim of WOMAN II project is to enlarge the number of the existing 4 validation sites, in order to create a working European network for data collection and elaboration and to promote the usage of the web portal among citizens and professionals. The Consortium aims to obtain early competitive advantage with the respect to use competitors and the possibility to pass the barriers to successful exploitation (10 sites more). The work to be faced is the adaptation, tuning, customisation and improvement of the already available WOMAN results towards the European users' needs.

WRAPIN

World-wide online Reliable Advice to Patients and Individuals (IST-2001-33260 BP)
The Health On the Net foundation is an international non-governmental organisation (established 1996) which provides reliable, trustworthy online advice to patients and medical personnel. The objective of WRAPIN is to expand the HON select services to set up a semi-automatic editorial policy service. This requires interconnection and access to additional scattered databases using in particular natural language processing tools. The project will develop the tools used in the SYNEX project for managing the access to distributed databases, as well as for implementing restricted access using a Public Key Infrastructure.

You will find more information regarding these projects and others on the Applications for Health page of the Information Society Technologies (IST) site.

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This page was last updated on 27/01/2010.