Katarzyna Zimoląg, Władysław Węglarz, Magdalena Wojtoń, and Monika Skiba | FMG
Competition Sponsor: EIT Health
Awardee Year: 2020
iCare is a telemedicine platform and mobile application designed to manage the eHealth of the senior population in the pre-palliative, palliative and terminal stages, providing care coordination, interoperability, analysis, outcomes, and risk prediction. Caregivers and medical staff involved in caring for a sick person can, in a convenient and intuitive way, continue a shared care plan, send information and recommendations, track measurements from telemedicine devices, and make decisions based on the collected information and test results.
The increase in the number of people requiring constant, daily home care is caused by the growing percentage of people 65+, the increase in life expectancy and the growing number of civilization diseases, i.e. for example name a very few: heart failure, high blood pressure, diseases of the cerebral vessels, including stroke, tumors, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, obesity, HIV / AIDS, chronic kidney disease etc. Telemedicine App created in response to the growing demand for tools supporting remote care of chronically ill patients.
Demand for widespread and rapid inclusion of remote services in medical procedures has increased worldwide due to the situation caused by the COVID-19 virus. This situation was a direct impetus for the creation of the iCare project.
While a private person usually looks after 1 person, the medical staff coordinates the care of approx. 30 patients per month, which means that that they must communicate with approx. 100 people daily.
Technology: The iCare application is built in accordance with the latest medical standards, ie HL7 FHIR, and meets the highest safety standards for storing and exchanging medical data. It allows to integrate any telemedicine devices and sensors as well as archive measurements and generate daily, weekly, and monthly reports.
iCare helps to organize medical records, collect a complete medical history, plan a care plan, while ensuring patient independence, safety and access to information and choice.
The development of the application will be focused on deepening the analysis of the collected data, developing algorithms for creating personalized patient-oriented care models, and improving doctors’ decisions and diagnoses based on collected cases and prediction of events. The iCare project was created on the basis of 15 years of experience in the implementation of telemedicine systems in Poland. The demand for the widest and fastest possible inclusion of remote services in medical procedures has increased around the world due to the situation caused by the COVID-19 virus.
The iCare project has been awarded by EIT Health for a solution for medicine, counteracting the effects of a pandemic and contributing to the development of care for an aging society.
The WHO, together with the European Palliative Care Society, have made recommendations to make palliative care an integral part of the healthcare system as soon as possible. In line with the recommendations of the Council of Europe for its members, national strategies for improving the quality of chronically ill people and their carers should be intensively developed and supported.
The iCare application will be the first platform of this type in Poland and one of the few in Europe and in the world.
To learn more about this proposal, email healthylongevity@nas.edu.