ICT-2007.5.1: Personal Health Systems for Monitoring and Point-of-Care diagnostics

Target outcome:

1. Personalised Monitoring: Innovative systems and services aimed at health status monitoring for persons at risk or with chronic health conditions, including those associated with ageing24. Solutions will be based on wearable or portable/mobile ICT systems, which empower citizens to participate in healthcare processes and facilitate remote monitoring and care at preferred environments, including homes. Emphasis will be on non-invasive or minimally-invasive, multi-parametric monitoring, combined with expert feedback and care, in closed-loop systems. Multi-parametric monitoring will encompass various health parameters (e.g. vital body signs or biochemical analytes) that determine the health state of an individual, and can also include information regarding activity, location, social and environmental context. Intelligent systems will combine and correlate multi-parametric data with expert biomedical knowledge. The developed systems will be interoperable with electronic medical records and the proposed solutions will have potential for adoption in actual healthcare systems.
   
   Specific focus will be on:
   
   1. Chronic disease management: Proposed solutions will have potential for integration in the healthcare process, including nursing care, primary or secondary healthcare and homecare. Intelligent closed-loop approaches will detect and assess trends and episodes, facilitate adaptive care (e.g. drug administration or new treatment regime) and promote doctor-patient interaction. This will be done, where clinically valid, remotely, anytime, anywhere, avoiding hospitalisation of patients.
      
   2. Preventive monitoring for people at risk (e.g. with personal/family history related to a disease or medical episode) to identify evolving patterns/trends in health and lifestyle parameters (e.g. in immune system status, sleep, nutrition, activity), which indicate elevated risks of developing diseases or reveal episodes at early stages. Solutions will ensure the necessary involvement of healthcare professionals, facilitate personalised guidance, encourage citizen compliance or prompt for early medical intervention.
      
      
2. Point-of-Care diagnostics: Systems for multi-analyte screening applications at primary care level. These will be portable or handheld devices, based on e.g. microarray and Labon-a-Chip technologies, capable of carrying out multiple tests at e.g. genome, proteome, metabolome levels. They will be able to identify predisposition to diseases, enable early diagnosis of a disease or their recurrence, and also provide detailed information to aid treatment, such as dosage advice or indicate when an individual should not be treated by a particular drug. Systems will demonstrate significant advances in sensitivity and specificity, and also in processing, analysis and quality control of the data produced. Particular attention will be paid to the interface with hospital and laboratory information
   systems and with electronic medical record systems.

   Projects will aim at targeted solutions that integrate all necessary technologies and components (e.g. sensors and networks, interfaces, intelligent algorithms, services over converged platforms). Wherever necessary, new technologies and components will be developed.
   

3. Coordination and Support Actions on the following three topics:
   1. RTD roadmap on Personal Health Systems identifying emerging technologies and potential applications, taking into account user demand, business aspects, ethical and legal considerations.
   2. Reliability aspects of wireless transmission of health-related information and any needs for exclusive radio frequency bands for continuous provision of care.
   3. Promotion and further recommendations for interoperability of Personal Health Systems with other eHealth systems, in the landscape of continuous care.
      

Expected impact:

• A valuable contribution to the stabilisation of the cost of the health delivery systems without compromising the quality and efficiency of healthcare. Improving the productivity of healthcare systems by facilitating of patient care at the point of need and through better health information processing. Accelerating the establishment of interoperability standards and secure and seamless communication of health data between all involved partners, including patients.
  
• Reinforced leadership of the EU Personal Health Systems industry, including consumer ICT products for initial assessment, monitoring and management of the
  health status.
• Higher quality care at the patient location, and resource savings by reducing hospitalisation and costly medical interventions. Better support and increased
  reassurance for people at risk. Facilitation of more active participation of citizens in illness prevention and care processes.
  

Funding schemes a-b): CP (IP only); c): CSA

Indicative budget distribution 60M€:

a-b): CP 59 M€; c): CSA 1 M€ Up to one CSA of maximum 500 K€ EC funding and 1 year duration for each topic