United4Health - pilot North-Norway

Transforming the patient experience with telehealth in Europe

United4Health (UNIversal solutions in TElemedicine Deployment for European HEALTH care will) “validate and strengthen the evidence for chronic disease management by telehealth solutions, especially on effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and transferability of the implementation of the services” by focusing on those indicators which, in the framework of the Renewing Health project, have proven valuable for evaluating these aspects.

Project description

United4Health aims to exploit and further deploy innovative telemedicine services implemented and trialled under Renewing Health.

Further, the project has the ambition to increase the use of telemedicine in Europe by producing high quality evaluations that can serve as support for decision makers considering implementing telemedicine services.

United4Health takes the best from previous trials in terms of homogeneous interventions in all the pilot sites. The pilot sites represent the variety of healthcare delivery organisations and cultures present in the EU. The project capitalises upon the results of its predecessors and will allow new regions to benefit from the experience acquired by the regions who participated in Renewing Health.

This will allow for, on the one hand, aggregating data coming from different pilot sites because of the homogeneity of the intervention and of the inclusion/exclusion criteria and, on the other hand, stratifying results to see how the same intervention has a different impact on the local healthcare delivery organisations in different countries.

The services trialled in United4Health have been selected from the vast range of services in Renewing Health. This limited number of interventions will be trialled in 15 regions. In general terms, they aim to give patients a central role in the management of their own disease in a way that is convenient to their daily lives by the use of remote monitoring. Further, the interventions are to fine-tune the choice and dosage of medications, promote compliance to treatment, and help professionals to detect early signs of worsening. The trials will run for two years targeting diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cardiovascular diseases.

In Norway there are two pilots in COPD, one in South-Norway at the Sorlandet syheus HF and one in North-Norway at the University Hospital North-Norway.

The project operates as a multi-centre clinical trial measuring efficiency and cost effectiveness of the implemented solutions. This will give scientific validity to the results and will promote adoption of remote patient monitoring and treatment on a large scale.

Project partners

Financing

CIP-ICT-PSP

Project lead

U4H project lead is Professor George Crooks from Medical Director for NHS 24 and Director of the Scottish Centre for Telehealth & Telecare.

Project lead for the Sourth Norwegian pilot is Frode Gallefoss (Sørlandet Sykehus HF), email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

Lead for the technical solution is in South-Norway is Rune Fensli (UiA, Senter for eHelse og omsorgsteknologi, email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

Project lead for the pilot in North-Norway is Aughild Hjalmarsen (UNN), email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

Undine Knarvik (NST) is responsible for administration of the project in North-Norway and for the coordination with the pilot in South-Norway as well as with the scottish project lead. email: email hidden; JavaScript is required, tel +47 917 42 705.

Project participants

• Carla Fagerli, UNN, email: email hidden; JavaScript is required
• Elisabeth Sjaaeng, NST, email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

External links

• U4H - official website
• Sørlandet Sykehus HF
• Universitetet i Agder - senter for ehelse og omsorgsteknologi