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Tele-Hospitalization On Retirement (THOR)

Publisher: 
European ICT Research and development
Author: 
European ICT Research and development
Date published: 
20 February, 2009
Region: 
International

Publication type: 
research

This project is specifically directed towards retired individuals, who have chronic disease conditions and who spend long periods of time in their second homes abroad. Currently our focus is on Spain where there are hundreds of thousands of foreign elderly people, many of whom need daily treatment, medication or care, and who face challenges in using medical services due to language problems. In this scenario, THOR will integrate a solution to allow the foreign population to keep in contact with their family doctor in their countries, increasing their quality of life and comfort when they are in their home in Spain, Finland, UK ,etc… Also other objectives are to free the local healthcare system in Málaga of taking care of those simple tasks, but also to allow the practitioners in Finland/UK to keep the contact with their patients, minimizing the “holidays effect” which means that this people, when they are in Spain, forget about their diseases, worsening their chronic condition which is suffered by their national healthcare system in Finland/UK, increasing the treatment expenses. To do this we will expand the selfcare tool they already have in Finland, with Spanish contents, like pharmacies, medical doctors, medical guidelines, drugs names, composition and equivalence with those in their countries, resume of the EHR, etc… At the same time, they will be able to measure and record basic biometrics like weight, blood pressure and glucose, to allow them to self monitoring, but also allowing their family doctor to access them, and maintain remote meetings based on videoconference over fixed of mobile devices. Beyond of this, in case of hospitalization, a collaborative tool for clinical sessions (sharing video, tests, HER, etc…), also videoconference based, will be deployed in the hospital in Spain and in the care centre in Finland and UK, to allow the Spanish doctors to be in contact, if needed, with their counterparts, to ask them for extra information about the patient, to be taken into account before surgery, heavy treatment etc… Finally, a mobile based location system will be integrated to allow the emergencies service to know where there are while calling, in the case of language problems.

 

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