RENEWING HEALTH the largest European project to date with almost 8,000 patients in 9 European regions is evaluating the use and impact of ICT and innovative telemedicine services. The pilot will use a patient-centered approach to help patients suffering from chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic lung problems to strengthen the evidence-based use of telehealth-based services in Europe and worldwide.
The RENEWING HEALTH pilot program has joined forces with the EU co-founders under the Information and Communication Technologies Policy support Program, (CIP ICT PSP), 9 European regions, 9 member states and some NGOs. These groups are advanced in the use and implementation of Personal Health Systems (PHS) along with telemedicine applications and services.
These 18 pilots have been running in parallel in 9 European regions for almost 4 years, and are expected to provide the hard evidence that decision makers need to make additional investments towards ICT. So far, Personal Health Systems used for a number of years, have mostly involved small numbers of patients, for short periods, and with the focus almost totally on clinical outcomes.
RENEWING HEALTH will evaluate the projects using a multidisciplinary evaluation method that will take into consideration more than just the clinical outcomes of the trials. The economic and organizational impact when using these services will be equally assessed since the economics of innovation cannot be ignored.
The evaluation of the large scale pilots will be done using the “Model for Assessment of Telemedicine (MAST). The objective is to produce a systematic and multidisciplinary assessment of the impact and outcomes of the integrated telemedicine services included in the RENEWING HEALTH pilots. MAST makes it possible to compare and aggregate data from different projects with similar interventions and is attracting major interest outside the RENEWING HEALTH consortium.
The results of the project will provide valuable information for the planning and design of future healthcare delivery in Europe and provide recommendations for large-scale deployment of telemedicine solutions.
In November, RENEWING HEALH held a Midterm Workshop to enable the sharing of information on the progress of the pilots and to enable the eHealth community to go beyond the geographical coverage of the projects and listen to other relevant experiences in deploying eHealth services.
Go to www.renewinghealth.eu for more information. For questions on RENEWING HEALTH, email Dr. Lorenzo Gubian Coordinator at lgubian@gmail.com or information on the workshop held in November, email the workshop organizer Marc Lange at marc.lange@ehtel.
