Telemedicine project establishes Alpine network

Monday 19th December 2011

An EU-funded telemedicine project hopes to establish a network in the Alpine region of the continent.

‘ALpine Hospitals Networking for Improved Access to Telemedicine Services’ (ALIAS) will involve eight hospitals from five countries, with the aim of fostering the development of cities and regions through European co-operation.

Each year, the European Union subsidises projects on defined topics for various regions, as part of its INTERREG funding program. 

Usually, the projects come with a duration of three years. The aim is to foster the development of cities and regions through European co-operation.

Under the auspices of the Region of Lombardy, the project ALIAS met with approval for enabling ‘Access and Networking in the Alpine Region’ for the funding period 2009 – 2012. 

In the context of the collaboration, access to telemedicine services is to be improved for hospitals in the Alpine region. 

The reason for the geographic focus is due to the fact that lower population density provides more of a need to work together on the basis of telemedicine in comparison to regions with a higher density of population.

“It is on the basis of the Bavarian State Ministry for Health and the Environment acting as a liaison that Garmisch-Partenkirchen Hospital is participating in ALIAS,” said IT manager Dr. Thomas Schmeidl.

“Jointly with organisations from Austria, Italy, France and Slovenia, as well as with Switzerland – a non-EU member country – we have worked, during the first project phase, on the definition of concrete application scenarios and the formulation of related services.” 

These efforts resulted in the programming of a secure communication platform (ACS = ALIAS Central System), as well as the signing of a Circle-of-Trust Agreement. 

After conclusion of this procedure, participants will start out on the pilot phase of the project, scheduled to last for one year. 

“This will include rolling out the test system into daily routine, and real data will be exchanged on concrete medical issues,” said Dr. Schmeidl.

“The partners in the project aim at ensuring access to clinical/medical information also from abroad, and at allowing for second opinion gathering from experts via electronic communication methods.” 

In cases where, in future, a patient from that region who suffers from a chronic illness plans to spend significant time abroad, he/she can be cared for by a hospital that is connected to the network. 

That hospital will be able to access, with the patient’s consent, the relevant patient information, and will retransmit data, which it generates to the care providers in the patient’s home country. 

This safeguards completeness of the documentation and of the patient record.

The pertinent workflow is standardised: an enquiry is made to ALIAS; the response includes an overview of all hospitals in the network which have an expert available. 

Upon selecting a hospital, the required documents are transmitted and forwarded to a specialist for consultation. 

Wherever required, those experts can ask questions via ACS or via integrated video conferencing.

“It is a key aspect of ALIAS that enquiries are always made to a hospital or a clinical department, and not to an individual physician; this helps to increase accessibility,” said Dr Schmeidl.  

“Recipients of enquiries are informed electronically via text message or email when documents arrive. In addition, service levels integrated into the system support work processes.

“The volume of data to be exchanged securely is not limited. For each enquiry, the system presents a view per patient case which integrates the entire communication including all documents and images related to that enquiry or to a patient.”

By the termination of the project at the end of 2012, plans are to establish all communication paths, find additional partners, and to integrate a special viewer for DICOM images into the platform.