The aim is to generate data for European healthcare systems so that telemedicine can be adopted as part of regular care for chronically ill patients. Renewing Health is a highly ambitious clinical trial that will involve close to 8 000 patients in the intervention groups with cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or diabetes from the nine participating regions.
The Veneto region in Italy is leading the project. Other regions involved include Southern Denmark, Northern Norway, Norrbotten in Sweden, Catalonia in Spain, South Karelia in Finland, central Greece, Carinthia in Austria and Berlin in Germany.
"In times of economic turmoil and with the demographic changes ahead, telemedicine is certainly a promising way to optimise the use of resources in healthcare," says Marco d'Angelantonio, Managing Director of a company specialised in the field of Social and Healthcare services and Project Manager of Renewing Health on behalf of the Veneto Region. Telemedicine, says d'Angelantonio, allows the treatment of chronically ill patients to be shifted from hospitals to the patient's home. "This increases the quality of life of the patients and reduces costs for the healthcare system."
The 'Renewing Health' project will try to quantify the benefit of telemedicine in terms of health economic outcomes: "We have defined various indicators like, for example, number and length of hospital stays and the number of accesses to the emergency department. This data should make it easier for healthcare systems to invest in personal health systems and telemedicine infrastructure."
In order to generate convincing evidence, a reasonable scale is necessary; this is something which many other telemedicine trials in the past have not been able to provide. Renewing Health is different in this respect, since it is an extremely large scale trial project: "We will have 8 000 patients in the study group and an almost equivalent number of patients in the control group. With this amount of patients, we will be able to fulfil the European Commission's explicit demands to provide a critical mass in order to produce convincing data," says d'Angelantonio.
Renewing Health also differs from conventional telemedicine trials in other respects. For instance, there was an explicit requirement to start from existing telemedicine services. "What we certainly do not want is to develop technology," d'Angelantonio explains. Renewing Health also takes place in nine different European countries. "This means that we will be able to evaluate telemedicine in very different healthcare system contexts and provide genuinely pan-European data."
The project was officially launched in February 2010. It is scheduled for 32 months in total. "By 1 February 2011, all regions will have gone live," says d'Angelantonio. The results of the Renewing Health trial, which is co-financed by the European Commission and the regions involved, are expected by fall 2012.
Further information:
- Original News Article - HealthTech Wire
- Related ePractice Article - EU: 'RENEWING HEALTH' project launched
- Renewing Health Project
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Quelle/Source: epractice, 10.12.2010
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