Tele-assistance for discharged patients supporting continuity of care

1. Tele-assistance for discharged patients supporting continuity of care Lăcrămioara STOICU-TIVADAR, Vasile STOICU-TIVADAR, Dorin BERIAN “Politehnica” University Timisoara Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Timişoara, Romania STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

2. Telecare systems • Supports continuity of care • Used for chronic patients after discharge from hospitals and monitor them at home • Improving life quality of elder anddisabled people at home STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

3. The TELEASIS project • Insures support for medical and social tele-assistance of elderly people. • Implements the medical and social home assistance services of the elderly persons in Romania • improving their quality of life • satisfying the desire to live longer in their own home under specialized assistance. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

4. Components of the TELEASIS system STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

5. TELEASIS system STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

6. The dispatcher module • Graphical monitoring of the signals read from the sensors and the alarms. • Displaying the care plan for patients and the actions completed in the care plan • Set-up of the data of the patients, the alarms and other settings which personalize the monitoring to the specific needs of each elderly person. • Future development: • Alert the dispatcher and medical specialists when an action in the care plan of a monitored individual isn’t completed at the proper time. • A specific report and data mining module, for further research purposes. • Future connectivity with the emergency services and with an automated SMS Sender. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

7. The Web service • The TELEASIS server hosts a Web service called by MITAS modules and the web application. • MITAS calls web methods to communicate to server data regarding the health status of monitored individuals or to report alarms. • Write_values() • Alarm() • Download_content() • Send_file() • The Web application calls web methods in order to interact to patients’ records and their care plans. • Get_patients_list() • Get_consultations() • Get_care_plan() • Get_care_plan_flow() • Write_consultation() • Write_care_plan() • Write_care_plan_results() • The Web service is securely accessed over SSL. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

8. The Web application • Communicates with server through XML documents. • There are different types of users having different access rights. • Patients: • view their data • enter results of simple medical procedures in their care plans. • Nurses: • view patients’ data • enter results of medical procedures in their care plans. • Physicians: • view patient’s data • enter consultations data • create, read or modify actions in care plans of patients. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

9. Technical issues STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

10. TELEASIS - a hybrid solution STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

11. TELEASIS - a hybrid solution • The Server hosts the Web service, but also an HTTP server that allows remote clients to access appropriate data, accordingly to their roles, by a simple browser. • Broker components are used to intermediate the dialog between the patients and/or the staff: • video streaming • online chat • offline messages. • Dispatcherensures monitoring of the signals read from the sensors and the alarms. • Another software components allow the set-up of patients data, the alarms and other settings. • The software solutions are developed under Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008 (VB and C#). • The database is MySQL STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

12. Intelligent features in TELEASIS • Intelligent features help system to become more „friendly” with the assisted person. • Patient empowerment = more accessibility to information of interest. • patients are able to access a central medical information database with text, audio, video multimedia presentations and videos. • the download mechanism is implemented via a Web service that invokes the context-based search engine and then establishes an ftp connection in order to download the requested information. • Patient socialization • Patients are able to contact the doctor online or offline. • Patients can communicate with each other. • patients with similar problems have the opportunity to exchange experience and support each other. • Intelligence is given by the content-based selection of the information • the available information or the communication partners are selected accordingly to the medical record of the patient. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

13. TELEASIS warning component • The specialized medical staff can define warning scenarios for each patient. An XML schema is generated and then downloaded in the MITAS modules. • The warning condition are checked at MITAS level. If a warning is raised, it is sent to the server by calling specific Web service methods. The assistance personnel will take the appropriate decisions. • By calling a Web service method, local XML schemas can be updated once a day. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

14. Conclusions • The TELEASIS system is currently under development and will be tested in real life conditions in the next month. • The presented system is designed to supply all the needs related to monitoring certain categories of patients at their homes and to avoid, when possible, hospitalization and to facilitate postsurgical surveillance. • Benefits: • Communication between different users increases the possibility of the patients to be better informed about their health status and they can exchange information with individuals having the same interests. • Increasing quality of care for elderly individuals and decreasing healthcare costs for this category. • The continuous monitoring of the individuals under medical treatment may provide useful feedback over the effects of medication and the interaction between medications. • The perspective is to contribute to improvement of healthcare management for this category, as well, as a future generation telecare networking application. STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland

15. Contact For the project: lacramioara.stoicu-tivadar@aut.upt.ro For Software specifications: vasile.stoicu-tivadar@aut.upt.ro For Software implementation: dorin.berian@aut.upt.ro Thank you! STC 2010 - Reykjavik, Iceland