Objective This project focuses on the medical and technical aspects of Telemedicine Applications which optimize the Quality of Care and Cost Benefits for the monitoring and management of patients in remote places (e.g. in home, health centre/small hospital or primary care sites). THE PILOT PHASE will involve the specification and implementation of limited demonstrators and the study, using agreed criteria, of the differing applications where telemedicine can be most relevant.A project was set up to assess the position of and possibilities for telemedicine in Europe both by review of existing work and also development of demonstrator projects in appropriate application areas. These areas were: obstetrics, general medicine, neurology, radiology and nephrology. All five demonstrators operated over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) as this was the only European wide standard network with near universal availability. Obstetrics: the demonstrator project concluded that the telemedicine link approach is feasible and effective. Women are able to make their own recordings without supervision and after only brief training. The system proposed should be as safe as in hospital monitoring. Blood pressure monitoring: 2 devices were tested. It was found that continuous ambulatory monitoring readings were consistently lower than casual readings. Both methods were acceptable to patients, but doctors believed that their workload would be increased by the introduction of such methods. Neurology: electroencephalograms of epileptic patients were recorded at distant sites and analysed to classify the type of disturbance and diagnose the type of epilepsy. The analysis was compared with results from analysis of paper tracer. 92% agreement was achieved on transient analysis and 100% on background analysis, showing that the system is robust enough to be used routinely in clinical practice. Radiology: this demonstrator investigated the feasibility of transmission of medical images for remote inspection by experts in tertiary sites to provide advice to primary as secondary sites. Diagnoses were possible in 55 out of 60 cases using magnetic resonance imaging. Nephrology: informatics and telemedicine were used to take individually optimized treatment to the patient. An on line computer was used to record and analyse patient data trends and adapt treatment regimes accordingly. The desirability and applicability of telemedicine have been confirmed. Guidelines have been given to maximize the potential of new telemedicine products.The tasks will include : 1. Studying the existing opportunities and requirements for telemedicine and constructing models of the current medical processes for the demonstrators in this project. 2. Performing a Quality of Care and Cost Analysis of the benefits of various telemedicine strategies. 3. Investigating the requirements and standards for telemedicine, including medico-legal implications. 4. Implementing the limited demonstrators of the project to illustrate the value of telemedicine in previously selected medical areas in five different countries. 5. Proposing tasks for future work and specifying demonstrator(s) for the main phase, which will best enable the benefits of telemedicine to be illustrated in a total clinical service context. THE MAIN PHASE will implement and evaluate a general purpose telemedicine system, capable of dealing with a variety of different types of sensors, signals ans systems, and passing the captured, processed and unprocessed data, to an appropriate site where it is automatically further processed, acted upon by an expert system and stored in databases. Important aspects of this project are the recommendation of a set of standards, applicable to the acquisition, processing and transmission of information in telemedicine ; and the specification of the distributed electronic multimedia medical record ready for transfer to the IBC environment. Main Deliverables : Reports on requirements opportunities and strategies for telemedicine. Recommendations for standards. Five telemedicine demonstrators. Fields of science medical and health sciencesclinical medicinegeneral medicinemedical and health scienceshealth scienceshealth care serviceseHealthmedical and health sciencesclinical medicinenephrologymedical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetricsengineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors Programme(s) FP2-AIM 1 - Community action (EEC) in the field of information technology & telecommunications applied to health care (AIM) - Exploratory action, 1988-1989 Topic(s) Data not available Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme Data not available Coordinator TELEFONICA SISTEMAS S.A. EU contribution No data Address Spain See on map Total cost No data Participants (9) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all FOUNDATION OF RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY-HELLAS Greece EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data Ferranti Industrial Electronics Ltd United Kingdom EU contribution No data Address DD2 3PN Dundee See on map Total cost No data Heriot-Watt University United Kingdom EU contribution No data Address Riccarton, Lord Balerno Building EH14 4AS EDINBURGH See on map Total cost No data Hospal Dasdo SpA Italy EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data INESC Portugal EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data Philips Sistemi Medicali Italy EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data SIEMENS AG Germany EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID Spain EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN Ireland EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data
