Initiatives

ICT4D Initiatives in i2HealthSantPau

The eHealth & eInclusion cluster of i2Cat Foundation has a wide experience in innovative telemedicine solutions, which have been successfully deployed in many projects within the European context. Most of these projects have been focused on professional-to-professional scenarios, where the use of different collaborative tools (such as videoconferencing platforms and shared medical reports) have proven to be a very useful approach to tackle health provisioning problems in locations with lack of specialized human resources.

However, the potential use of telemedicine not only applies to developed regions, but also to developing countries, as it can be an efficient means of improving health access in isolated areas. Taking into account different scenarios from countries in the South, it can be stated that health services are highly centralized, as specialized assistance is located mainly in the capital, thus leaving rural areas without proper basic health care service. Therefore, eHealth solutions appear to be a suitable solution for this scenario, not only improving healthcare access, but also supporting health workers in isolated settings or addressing the shortage of specialist doctors in areas without proper human and material resources.

Consequently, after a first tele-ophthalmology project in Senegal (OFTALKOLDA) and given the opportunity that this situation brings, the cluster of eHealth & eInclusion has started to explore new collaborations and joint proposals with research institutions and NGO’s from the developing eHealth sector in Africa. For instance, a collaborative proposal has been submitted with the African NGO AMREF, related to the continuation of the OFTALKOLDA project in Senegal, and also a first contact has been made with Médicos Sin Fronteras, in order to explore solutions related to mobile videconferencing systems. Last but not least, the cluster of eHealth & eDependence, together with the Media cluster and other european partners (PSNC), will presented a paper related to the HIPERMED Project and the possible application in development contexts, in the next IST Africa Event 2013 to be held in Nairobi, Kenya.
 

 

Senegalaise optician taking digital eye-fundus pictures

i2Health Sant Pau

i2HealthSantPau within the global network research community

Research is becoming more collaborative, with researchers working together in teams or projects, but their members are often spread over locations far apart from one another. The ability to transfer data and share information together is crucial to productive working in this distributed environment. Science is also becoming more data intensive, with experiments and experimental facilities generating very large quantities of data which need to be stored and/or analysed. 

GÉANT is a flagship project of the EU, key to keeping Europe at the forefront of the global research race. GÉANT is sponsored by the e-Infrastructures Unit of DG CONNECT of the European Commission. DG CONNECT is the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Its vision is to make every European digital, and its flagship initiative for achieving this is the Digital Agenda for Europe. DG CONNECT supports ICT research & innovation and deploys regulatory and policy tools in order to boost growth and create jobs.

The GÉANT project is a collaboration between 41 partners: 38 European NRENs, DANTE, TERENA and NORDUnet (representing the five Nordic countries). In total, the project represents 43 NRENs from Europe and nations with FP7 third country agreements. Through the NREN partners, GÉANT delivers a range of services across the network for institutions, projects and researchers.


RedIRIS is the Spanish academic and research network that provides advanced communication services to the scientific community and national universities. I2CAT is connected to the RedIRIS infraestrcure and this way accessing straight to the global reserach community.

At the same time, i2CAT provides value-added research services through the EXPERIMENTA Platform (http://fi2.cat/experimenta). Such platform is a Future Internet test-bed network infrastructure that provides optical transport equipment, wireless and sensor networks as well as provides connection to local stakeholders within metropolitan area of Barcelona through the Industrial Ring (http://www.cesca.cat/en/project/industrial-ring).

i2healthsanpau Knowledge Centre is connected to the global research community as a node located in the Hospital de Sant Pau enclosure. Such connectivity enables research and innovation activities carried out by the Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau and i2CAT joint venture to interact with the global research community.

Digital services devoted to the health sector are developed in the i2healthsantpau Knowledge Centre and nowadays it counts with the following resources: 

Portal del Paciente

Approaching patients and clinicians

Portal del Paciente is an innovative project developed by the eHealth & eInclusion cluster of i2Cat Foundation for the children’s hospital Hospital Sant Joan de Déu. The project is part of the Hospital Líquido initiative from Hospital Sant Joan de Déu that uses the new technologies to attend the patients beyond the physical barriers of the hospital and to promote the dissemination of health knowledge.

The project aims to develop a website where the patients and patient’s parents can communicate with the clinicians and also obtain useful information about their health. The version 1.1 of the Portal del Paciente has been released in February 2013 and includes the following functionalities:

Clinical documentation about the patient:
● Medical Reports
● Image diagnostics
● Laboratory results

Tele-assistance services:
● Online consultation through videoconference
● Tele-consultation through secure messaging
● Tele-monitoring of the patients diabetes

Health contents (text, videos and URLs):
● Generic and useful health information.
● Specially tailored health advice.

The project will contribute to provide a better assistance and follow-up to the patients, while encourages them to be active participants in their health management.

The project is constantly evolving; currently i2Cat is developing the version 2.0 that will include a new Look & Feel, improvements detected during the pilot and also an application to access the portal from a Tablet PC.

Bariatric Surgery

Virtual Reality Platform for simulate Bariatric Surgery and predict patient evolution

The Bariatric Surgery Project is a multidisciplinary initiative designed and executed by healthcare professionals (surgeons and radiologist) and e-Health researchers. It aims to develop a Virtual Reality platform to support surgeons in prepare and perform the surgery, as well as, estimate patient’s evolution.

The system will retrieve the patient’s abdominal TACs from the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) available at the hospital. From these TACS the system will generate a real 3D representation of the patient’s stomach. The platform will allow the physicians to interact with the 3D model, zoom it, decompose it and finally plan the real surgery simulating it over the 3D model. Also, the platform will incorporate heuristic models providing a prediction of the patient’s weight loss.

After the Surgery will be possible generate new 3D representation of the patient’s stomach, allowing the physicians study the result of the surgery, and preventing post-surgery complications or not expected outcomes.

The system will be integrated with the Hospital information system, allowing retrieving DICOM TACs, the storage of the 3D patient’s stomach model from the PACS and the sending of the patient’s information into his electronic health record (EHR) using HL7 standards.

In addition, Bariatric Surgery project includes a predictive model, which based on previous data from similar surgeries and combined with data of the patient will be able to estimate the evolution.

Currently we are working on collect patients data from previous bariatric surgery interventions for the study, a first prototype of 3D stomach reconstruction, which has been designed and will be tested by using real TACs, and the development of a especial data base for the project and its integration with the Hospital Information Systems.

Website: http://bariatric-surgery.i2cat.net/

Partners:

Funded by Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, national plan of scientific research, development and technological innovation 2008-2011.

IPT-2011-1377-900000