Atos, an international information technology services company, has joined a group of European partners to take part in the development of MobiGuide, an innovative remote monitoring system that will gather treatment information of Spanish patients with diabetes and arrhythmia via the use of mobile devices during the testing phase. MobiGuide is a wide-ranging international research project coordinated by the University of Haifa (Israel) whose objective is to develop a computer system that will allow patients who need to be continuously monitored to safely receive updates about their medical treatment and care in real time, even outside controlled clinical environments, and respecting the privacy of the data collected. The European Union chose this four year project from among 60 applications, contributing over 6 million euros to help finance it. The project seeks to help patients who need to be under continuous observation lead a more normal life, with different clinical parameters such as sugar level, cardiac frequency and arterial pressure being monitored and displayed on mobile telephones or a personal computer. This will minimize the need for patient movement and the number of hospital visits for simple monitoring sessions. During the first stage, the project will be implemented in Italy, with patients who suffer from cardiac arrhythmia, and Spain, with patients suffering from complications from their pregnancy such as diabetes and high arterial pressure. Medical information is collected automatically via small portable devices worn by the patients, using the innovative technology developed by researchers in the Netherlands. “The majority of the system’s technological components already existed individually, but up until now, they had not been properly integrated and personalized. In this project we integrated and expanded these systems to ensure that the final product would improve patients’ quality of life and reduce doctors’ workloads,” said Mor Peleg, Head of the Department of Computer Systems at the University of Haifa and scientific coordinator of the project. The system will also make it possible to gather non-clinical parameters such as the socio-economic and family status of the patients and even whether they are travelling during the observation period, allowing for treatment according to the personal circumstances of the patient and not just their clinical status. For example, the system can take into account different recommendations for an elderly person and for someone living with family members. The information recorded in hospitals’ health records and gathered by the monitoring devices and the DSS or Decision Support System will remain in the patients’ power and not that of medical institution that generates them. If the patient requires treatment they can go to the closest hospital and give local doctors access to their medical information, which can be recovered from the internet. The MobiGuide group is made up of partners from academic and industrial circles and healthcare institutions from five different countries. Apart from the University of Haifa, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ben-Gurion University, Beacon Tech Ltd. (Israel); the University of Pavia, the Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri Clínica del Lavoro e della riabilitazione (Italy); the University of Twente ZorgGemak BV, Mobihealth Co. (The Netherlands) and the Technology University of Vienna (Austria) are all members of the group. The Associació de Diabétics de Catalunya and the Corporació Sanitaria Parc Tauli also took part.
