Objective
Diabetes affects some 30 million citizens in the EU, accounting for an estimated 7% of its health budget. T-IDDM will cut costs and time devoted to insulin therapy, by using telematics management to monitor patients and facilitate their access to treatment. In a proposed two-part service, one unit is to assist patients with local consultation procedures and similar support, while a workstation helps the doctor deal with long-term patient management. These modules intercommunicate, so that therapeutic strategies can be prescribed to the patient, who then transmits relevant data back.
Diabetes causes metabolic alterations and long term invalidating complications related to renal, neurological, cerebrovascular, cardiovascular and peripheral vascular diseases. In Europe about 30 million people suffer from diabetes; 20% of them require exogenous insulin administration to survive (insulin-dependent patients). Recent medical evidences show that a better metabolic control achieved through Intensive Insulin Therapy can delay or prevent the development of long-term complications It requires frequent insulin injections, accurate blood glucose monitoring and strict surveillance by health care professionals. This patient management procedure is expensive and time-consuming. It is calculated that 7% of the total European health care expenditures is absorbed by diabetes care and the major part of this budget results from the management of the above mentioned complications. The administration of an appropriate therapy and the reduction of chronic complications are expected to produce economical benefits for patients, their families, and the community. A considerable saving of money could be obtained through the use of telecommunication services for the active monitoring of the patients. Telematic management services can also be helpful in providing all patients with equal access opportunities to specialized health care centers, independently, for instance, of their geographical location.
The T-IDDM Project concerns the design, implementation and testing of an intelligent telematic service to assist Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (IDDM) patients, providing the physician with a decision support tool for improving management of patients according to the best current medical practice. The service we propose exploits two main components: a patient unit and a medical workstation. The patient unit provides assistance to the patient under the form of a set of local consultation procedures, autonomous decision-support tools and teleconsultation to the remote medical workstation. The medical workstation deals with the long-term management of the patient by assisting the physician in choosing an appropriate treatment protocol, defined in terms of insulin timing, type, and total amount, as well as a diet scheme. The two modules are able to work independently, but they rely on a bidirectional communication channel to exchange relevant information: the patient unit receives the day by day therapeutic strategy to follow from the workstation, under the form of the treatment protocol, and is able to communicate relevant data back to the medical workstation. T-IDDM proposes a major shift from hospital-based information systems to patient-based information systems.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
27100 Pavia
Italy