Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RES-Q PLUS (Comprehensive solutions of healthcare improvement based on the global Registry of Stroke Care Quality)
Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2024-04-30
The primary objective of RES-Q+ is to revolutionize the collection, analysis, and utilization of data on stroke care provided by hospitals. By capturing the entire patient care pathway, RES-Q+ aims to improve stroke care and patient outcomes while addressing the challenges of today’s healthcare, including staff shortages, an aging population, and the evolving needs of populations and healthcare systems. This initiative meets the urgent need for enhanced stroke care quality through advanced data collection and analysis techniques. The RES-Q+ Project builds on the RES-Q Registry in Stroke Care Quality, a comprehensive program for monitoring and improving stroke care quality worldwide, developed by several stakeholders under the umbrella of the European Stroke Organisation.
The RES-Q+ consortium is leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and a clinically-validated semantic model to automate the ingestion of hospital discharge reports across different languages. This automation assists in audit and feedback processes, creating a standardised model for discharge reports, employing AI to impute missing data and generating standardised discharge reports. Additionally, RES-Q+ is introducing two innovative AI-enabled virtual assistants: one to aid patients in providing feedback on their health and recovery, the other to assist physicians in delivering high-quality care.
The RES-Q+ project consortium is integrating these advanced tools into one platform to form the foundation for a European Open Stroke Data Platform. This open research platform is facilitating data aggregation, semantic harmonisation, and interoperability across European countries, thereby promoting the use and re-use of health data.
The RES-Q+ consortium expect impact of the project on saving lives and improving the quality of life for stroke survivors by enhancing data sharing, standardising care, and integrating innovative AI tools into healthcare systems. The project transforms stroke care quality improvement from national to international levels, benefiting clinicians, policymakers, and researchers in real-time.
The project incorporates social sciences and humanities through user design research to understand patient needs and behaviour for enhanced user experience with the developed tools. Moreover, ethical and legal considerations are embedded in the development and deployment processes.
The RES-Q+ consortium is leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and a clinically-validated semantic model to automate the ingestion of hospital discharge reports across different languages. This automation assists in audit and feedback processes, creating a standardised model for discharge reports, employing AI to impute missing data and generating standardised discharge reports. Additionally, RES-Q+ is introducing two innovative AI-enabled virtual assistants: one to aid patients in providing feedback on their health and recovery, the other to assist physicians in delivering high-quality care.
The RES-Q+ project consortium is integrating these advanced tools into one platform to form the foundation for a European Open Stroke Data Platform. This open research platform is facilitating data aggregation, semantic harmonisation, and interoperability across European countries, thereby promoting the use and re-use of health data.
The RES-Q+ consortium expect impact of the project on saving lives and improving the quality of life for stroke survivors by enhancing data sharing, standardising care, and integrating innovative AI tools into healthcare systems. The project transforms stroke care quality improvement from national to international levels, benefiting clinicians, policymakers, and researchers in real-time.
The project incorporates social sciences and humanities through user design research to understand patient needs and behaviour for enhanced user experience with the developed tools. Moreover, ethical and legal considerations are embedded in the development and deployment processes.
RES-Q+ has achieved several significant milestones and goals, contributing to the advancement of science, technology, and innovation in Europe. Within ten work packages covering design, user engagement, technical development, validation, legal and ethical compliance, and cooperation with international stroke organizations and initiatives on disseminating project outputs, the project consortium has accomplished the following results within the first 18 months.
A tool for standardizing discharge reports was developed in response to analyses of discharge reports from several countries, achieving functional integration and user acceptance. Another tool, a discharge importer tool, was successfully defined and tested with high user accuracy. The consortium made significant progress in designing and prototyping virtual assistants for patients and clinicians, incorporating detailed user feedback and ethical considerations. To implement all tools developed within the RES-Q+ project, the legal partners ensured compliance with legal and ethical requirements through comprehensive documentation, agreements, and assessments, setting the groundwork for future regulatory strategies.
The RES-Q+ project has also made significant progress in various technical areas. Project partners established a semantic architecture for the RES-Q+ platform, integrating clinical data, natural language processing (NLP), and semantic technologies to enhance data handling and analysis. Additionally, project members implemented virtualization by setting up a virtual repository and a semantic layer, enabling seamless data querying and manipulation.
One of the key achievements of the RES-Q+ project is the successful mapping of the RES-Q+ form to SNOMED CT codes, ensuring standardized data representation across the platform. Advanced information extraction tools, including a multilingual extractive QA tool and synthetic corpora for NLP experiments, were also developed, significantly advancing the project's information extraction capabilities. To ensure system reliability and efficiency, the consortium conducted comprehensive performance tests for the integration of the RES-Q+ platform and the semantic layer. These efforts collectively contribute to the robust functionality and effectiveness of the RES-Q+ platform in improving stroke care and patient outcomes.
Moreover, the consortium developed strong relations among members, managing to meet in person at least twice a year. Together, they developed and utilized a project visual identity, supported by the World Stroke Organization, ANGELS Initiative, and Stroke Alliance for Europe, which help bring RES-Q+ outputs to the stroke professional and patient communities.
Figure 1: The RES-Q+ consortium at the Kick-off meeting in Prague, 2022.
A tool for standardizing discharge reports was developed in response to analyses of discharge reports from several countries, achieving functional integration and user acceptance. Another tool, a discharge importer tool, was successfully defined and tested with high user accuracy. The consortium made significant progress in designing and prototyping virtual assistants for patients and clinicians, incorporating detailed user feedback and ethical considerations. To implement all tools developed within the RES-Q+ project, the legal partners ensured compliance with legal and ethical requirements through comprehensive documentation, agreements, and assessments, setting the groundwork for future regulatory strategies.
The RES-Q+ project has also made significant progress in various technical areas. Project partners established a semantic architecture for the RES-Q+ platform, integrating clinical data, natural language processing (NLP), and semantic technologies to enhance data handling and analysis. Additionally, project members implemented virtualization by setting up a virtual repository and a semantic layer, enabling seamless data querying and manipulation.
One of the key achievements of the RES-Q+ project is the successful mapping of the RES-Q+ form to SNOMED CT codes, ensuring standardized data representation across the platform. Advanced information extraction tools, including a multilingual extractive QA tool and synthetic corpora for NLP experiments, were also developed, significantly advancing the project's information extraction capabilities. To ensure system reliability and efficiency, the consortium conducted comprehensive performance tests for the integration of the RES-Q+ platform and the semantic layer. These efforts collectively contribute to the robust functionality and effectiveness of the RES-Q+ platform in improving stroke care and patient outcomes.
Moreover, the consortium developed strong relations among members, managing to meet in person at least twice a year. Together, they developed and utilized a project visual identity, supported by the World Stroke Organization, ANGELS Initiative, and Stroke Alliance for Europe, which help bring RES-Q+ outputs to the stroke professional and patient communities.
Figure 1: The RES-Q+ consortium at the Kick-off meeting in Prague, 2022.
The RES-Q+ Project has developed several remarkable results with significant impact on the future of stroke care and healthcare in general.
One of its notable achievements is the Automated Data Entry Tool, which allows healthcare quality data to be automatically loaded from hospital systems into the RES-Q platform. This eliminates the need for manual data entry by doctors or nurses, significantly saving time for healthcare staff while ensuring continual monitoring of healthcare quality, a standard of care requirement.
The Discharge Report Generator is another important output of the RES-Q+ project. This tool allows users to generate discharge reports from any existing RES-Q record, assess their usefulness, and provide feedback, which is incorporated into subsequent versions of the standard. Integrated as a component of the new RES-Q platform, it currently supports English and Czech, with plans to support additional languages through the inclusion of medically validated dictionaries of used terms.
The RES-Q+ consortium has also been working on virtual assistants for both healthcare providers and patients. The Virtual Assistant for Healthcare Providers helps to better understand their performance by analysing stroke care quality data and identifying areas needing improvement in patient care. The Virtual Assistant for Patients is a mobile application controlled by voice or touch, designed to monitor patients' conditions after discharge. It makes health data available online to doctors for more effective check-ups and provides patients with information to aid in their treatment and referrals to specialists based on their specific problems.
Additionally, the project has developed predictive models to evaluate and identify connections between the quality of care and its outcomes, aiding in predicting patients' prognoses.
Finally, RES-Q+ aims to create a European Data Sharing Platform, establishing a European open space for data sharing on stroke patient care, both legally and technically. The consortium is creating a legal environment that allows sharing health data on stroke patients, usable for scientific purposes, clinical practice, and by patients themselves.
One of its notable achievements is the Automated Data Entry Tool, which allows healthcare quality data to be automatically loaded from hospital systems into the RES-Q platform. This eliminates the need for manual data entry by doctors or nurses, significantly saving time for healthcare staff while ensuring continual monitoring of healthcare quality, a standard of care requirement.
The Discharge Report Generator is another important output of the RES-Q+ project. This tool allows users to generate discharge reports from any existing RES-Q record, assess their usefulness, and provide feedback, which is incorporated into subsequent versions of the standard. Integrated as a component of the new RES-Q platform, it currently supports English and Czech, with plans to support additional languages through the inclusion of medically validated dictionaries of used terms.
The RES-Q+ consortium has also been working on virtual assistants for both healthcare providers and patients. The Virtual Assistant for Healthcare Providers helps to better understand their performance by analysing stroke care quality data and identifying areas needing improvement in patient care. The Virtual Assistant for Patients is a mobile application controlled by voice or touch, designed to monitor patients' conditions after discharge. It makes health data available online to doctors for more effective check-ups and provides patients with information to aid in their treatment and referrals to specialists based on their specific problems.
Additionally, the project has developed predictive models to evaluate and identify connections between the quality of care and its outcomes, aiding in predicting patients' prognoses.
Finally, RES-Q+ aims to create a European Data Sharing Platform, establishing a European open space for data sharing on stroke patient care, both legally and technically. The consortium is creating a legal environment that allows sharing health data on stroke patients, usable for scientific purposes, clinical practice, and by patients themselves.