With a growing ageing population (in which many could experience multiple chronic diseases), governments and health authorities in the European Union are rightly concerned with rising health-care costs. Remote health-care offers a way of alleviating this problem and the SERENE-IoT project supports this approach through quality remote-care and diagnostic tools based on advanced, smart health-care, and the internet of things.
Medical progress in last decades have significantly fallen mortality rates and have staidly improved our global health and this transformation is impacting seriously our health and social care systems. Some 30% of the population in the European Union (EU) will be over 65 by 2030; two out of three people of retirement age will have at least two chronic illnesses. Currently, 70% of health-care are on chronic illnesses and 41% on hospital care; and health-care costs in the EU represent 9% of GDP and are expected to reach 10.5% in 2060. Fortunately, the convergence of the health-care and the high-tech mass-market ecosystems is co
ming to a point where things and people are increasingly connected, as with the internet of things (IoT), and where health-care is partly divided between hospital and home. Impacting our health models, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is born. Unsurprisingly, the economic and social impact due to chronic diseases in Europe will make this move mandatory in order to keep medical and social services sustainable and improve patients’ quality of life.
Remote health-care and diagnosis through the internet of things
SERENE_IoT will focus on benefiting the patient with an improved quality of life and better access to health-care in general, as well as reducing health-care costs. It will achieve this by addressing the specific needs of patients being handled remotely by professional caregivers through the development, by European companies and research institutions, of smart e-health IoT devices and an advanced architectures.
The core values of this project are:
- High quality of health-care services;
- High level of trust (security, safety, privacy, robustness);
- Efficient execution of required tasks;
- Interoperable and compatible information technology (IT) systems;
- Reduced costs compared to current traditional care.
Major project outcomes and deliverables will be three Clinical Prototypes that will validate benefits derived from remote-care scenarios. In line with the so-called medical innovation cycle (up to ‘clinical prototype’ level), SERENE-IoT will develop three medical devices to meet the following medical challenges:
1. Providing homebased health-care services remotely: by developing the first low-power medical IoT module validated with two class IIx medical devices;
2. Early detection of Methicillin-resistant bacteria: by developing the first low-power mobile detector for MRSA (antibiotic-resistant bacteria);
3. Fall prevention: by developing a fully wireless insole for fall detection and risk monitoring.
These medical devices will be validated in real clinical environments under mono-centric and multi-centric clinical conditions. Importantly, the three demonstrators will be used to provide the necessary validation of advanced concepts needed by European industry for the development and manufacture of products and services in the area of remote medical-care.
Importantly, SERENE-IoT will contribute to the evaluation of a secure, end-to-end, IoT system platform in ‘real-life’ scenarios (including the use of the proposed health-care data structure), while demonstrating the resulting benefits. Certification and industrialisation phases will follow the SERENE-IoT project.
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