Renewing Health – Better Solutions for Citizens with Chronic Conditions

Renewing Health is a project under the ICT Policy Support Programme. The project is meant to develop and evaluate large scale solutions and services for patients with chronic health issues. The tool that is used is a patient-centred approach and a common evaluation tool MAST (Model for Assessment of Telemedicine).
 
The project is compound by a consortium consisting of the most advanced regions in Europe working with implementation of ICT related solutions. In the participating regions the solutions are already in operation on a regional level and deals with monitoring and treatment of patients with chronic conditions including diabetes, COPD, and heart diseases.

The solutions are designed to increase patient empowerment and to give the patients more control over their own treatment and also to make it possible for the health professionals to discover the signs of impairments earlier. In the Region of Southern Denmark this applies to the following projects:

• Patient Briefcase (COPD-briefcase)
• Telemedicine Ulcer Treatment

The MAST model has been developed by the Region of Southern Denmark and is an approved model for evaluation of telemedicine and also telecare. The model is also being used in the large international projects SmartCare and United4Health.

The wanted goals in Renewing Health

• Patient empowerment: involvement of the patient in their own condition and treatment.
• User satisfaction: solutions in the project that are user oriented and improve the patients’ own involvement in the treatment.
• Economic benefits: the project will reduce the number of acute admissions – this includes reorganisation of the treatment and thereby an economic restructuring that is less expensive than acute admissions.
• Organisational restructuring: the project intends to develop an organisational model for all telemedicine solutions that takes into account the patients involvement in the organisational model. The model will be transferable to other diseases and health authorities.