Integrated and modular system for remote health and social care, support for independent living of elderly with chronic conditions living in rural and isolated areas

Project acronym: REMOTE

Partners: SIEMENS S.A. (Spain),TSB Soluciones S.A. (Spain), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain), Fundación para la Investigación Médica Aplicada (Spain), Saliwell Ltd. (Israel), Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), Netscouts gemeinnuetzige GmbH (Germany), Abama Technologies S.L. (Spain), Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (Norway), The European Older People´s Platform (HQ, Belgium), Bluepoint IT Solutions (Romania), Medea SRL (Italy), Fraunhofer-Institut für Biomedizinische Technik (Germany), Ortholine Ltd. (Israel), European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (HQ, Belgium).

Project coordinator: María García Robledo, SIEMENS S.A, Spain.

Project manager Norway: Siri Bjørvig, Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine, University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø.

Primary objective: Define and establish a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to R&D in ICT for addressing, in real life contexts, identified needs of frail elderly, especially people at risk due to geographic and social isolation in combination with chronic conditions.

Project summary: REMOTE will offer a modular system of an ambient intelligent platform and telehealth applications for elderly people living in rural areas. The innovation resides in the integration of ICT components like wearables, sensors, localization systems for primary end-user and like tele-monitoring services, decision support web-based tools for secondary users. The emphasis is on applications, such as health telematics, to be used in the home environment. Health care professionals will have access to real time data on health and health/disease progress. The solutions resulting from this project will also give elderly people the opportunity to improve their self-management of chronic disease, enhance their ability to sustain and engage in social interaction and social participation through appropriate communication platforms.

Applications and services will be designed to enhance the users' self-care, social interaction, and skills required for independent living. The users will be assisted in understanding their condition and living with it autonomously, but also safely, through remote and unobtrusive surveillance of professional carers, family members and friends. The solution will provide the secondary users, e.g medical and other professionals, with tools for monitoring run-time and historical patient data and implementing patient-centric tele-healthcare, thus reducing paper work and travel required for both parties. They will also have access to decision support tools which facilitate the task of reviewing patient data and generate personalised care plans and every-day feedback to patients. These modules will be web-based to enable professionals to access them at anytime and from anywhere, while a selection of them will operate effectively also on mobile devices.

Project period: April 2009 - April 2012

Further information/website: www.remote-project.eu

National grant programme in Norway: IT Funk (ICT for disabled and elderly people)