REMOTE: 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 (15): TSB Soluciones S.A. (Spain), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain), Fundación para la Investigación Médica Aplicada (Spain), Peh-Med 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: Alexandros Mourouzis, CERTH (Centre for Research and Technology Hellas).

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.

Norwegian participation: Pilot project "Chronic Heart Failure Home Telemonitoring"

In Norway, total costs for treatment of chronic heart failure (CHF) are vast, consisting of treatment costs, daily medication over many years and loss of quality of life for patients and their family caregivers. Advanced telemonitoring technology with electronic transfer of physiological data such as blood pressure and weight, is already being used in research and established routine services in several European countries, but not in Norway. Isolated areas in remote regions, as in Northern Norway, mean long travelling distances for patients. The pilot service in the REMOTE project consists of daily monitoring of patients' weight and blood pressure directly in their home; automatically and securely transmitting the values to a data server at the telemedicine centre in the hospital (NST).

The primary objective of the pilot study is to test the REMOTE platform and explore whether, in comparison with current care service, home telemonitoring will improve the patients' quality of life, reduce access-related challenges expressed by the participating users - patients, clinicians and family members.

For the final conclusion to be positive, identifying additional conditions for “best practice” services are required. In order to justify the costs for introduction of novel health services for remote monitoring in Europe, positive outcomes on cost effectiveness and treatment quality must be documented.

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 - 30.6.2012

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

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