EU project enables participants to 'look beyond frontiers'
The funding of an EU project to provide home monitoring and treatment of patients, TOPCARE, is enabling participants to learn about technological developments in other countries, Stephan Kiefer from the Fraunhofer institute for biomedical engineering in Germany, the project coordinator told CORDIS News. The TOPCARE project will provide home monitoring and treatment for those needing infusion therapies, controlled ventilatory support and monitored medication adjustment and adherence control. The Commission is providing funding of 2.11 million euro under its IST programme for the project. 'It is a nice situation to have a mix of cultures and we learn to look beyond our frontiers at what is going on in the field of technology,' said Mr Kiefer. 'We also learn more about healthcare systems in European countries since you must have in mind what the systems are to find the market position,' he said. Telematic communication technologies and modern vital sign monitoring will be applied in order to enhance post-clinical treatment in an out patient setting, foster communication between the patient, practitioners and clinics, and to provide electronic assistance in documentation management for improved quality assurance. TOPCARE will also address the need for reliable and safe ambulatory devices and services that foster patient compliance in the home environment. The project is expected to lay the groundwork for a telematic based European homecare market. 'The patient can stay at home. There is some data you can capture - information about his body, which is stored in a database. The information can be sent to the doctor if he asks for data,' Jochen Schmidt, also from the Fraunhofer Institute, told CORDIS News. 'The new thing is not that we use new products, we try to use products that are already in the market and we write software that can connect all these different devices to one single system, so you only need one system,' he added. Mr Kiefer estimated that, after the project is completed at the end of 2003, a further year may be needed for development and then the system will be a finished product.