Partners

Lead Company of the Engineering Group, counting over 10.000 employees in Italy and across Europe, in South America and United States, Ingegneria Informatica operates in different markets: Public Administration & Healthcare; Telco & Utilities; Industry & Services; Finance. Engineering has been constantly promoting research on software since 1987, through an R&D Department that participates in national and EU research initiatives, focusing on Cyber Security, Social Systems, e-Government, Healthcare, Software Engineering, Cultural Heritage, Social Media. The Group is partner of EIT ICT Labs in Italy, NESSI, FIWARE initiative, Alliance for the Internet of Things, HL7 Italy and IHE, co-founder of the Big Data Value PPP.

Engineering is directly involved in InteropEHRate having the role of project coordinator and Scientific and Technical Manager, being in charge of collecting requirements and designing architecture, involved in the process for defining the interoperability protocols. Engineering team experienced on innovative EHR, interaction and communication models, architectures for integrating healthcare processes, healthcare data management and exchange based on international standards.

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Patients need their health data. Pharma need PRO and RWE for new clinical trials. Hospitals need access to patients for continuity of care. We built the platform to help these 3 actors.

A7 Software offers a personal health record (Andaman7) on Apple and Android mobile devices and a HIP™ – Health Intermediation Platform which is designed to support clinical trial recruitment, consent and patient data collection.  Without storing data in the cloud (peer-to-peer architecture).

We are looking to connect with hospitals, research institutions, pharma companies and CROs that typically do not have strong patient facing digital solutions, where Andaman7 can contribute to their operational efficiencies.

In terms of market presence, Andaman7 is currently being used by more than 20.000 patients spread over 30+ countries. We are finalizing integration with 50% of US-health systems covering 50% of the population. Andaman7 is multi-disease and currently used in clinical studies such as an oncology study sponsored by EORTC, or a trial ready cohort project in Crohn’s disease with a large pharmaceutical company.

In the project, A7 Software will contribute to the definition of software requirements and architecture specifications of a S-EHR (Smart-EHR, aka PHR or Personal Health Record) as well as implement the new innovative components in its mobile app.

EHTEL is the leading forum for decision makers and implementers in Europe, engaged in supporting the transformation of the health and care practice in Europe through digitalisation (i.e. eHealth, telehealth, mHealth …).

The association brings together under one roof a wide range of constituencies crucial for the betterment of health and social care with health IT. They include: National and regional health authorities and systems, Hospitals and other health institutions, Public and private insurance providers, Health professionals, Health managers and executives, Patients, Citizens and consumers, Industry, and Researchers and academics.

EHTEL provides a platform for information, representation, networking and co-operation to its 50+ corporate members.

In the project, EHTEL is in charge of coordinating all dissemination and communication activities as well as facilitating conversations between the consortium and representatives of stakeholders working on the implementation of digital health in Europe.

Hygeia S.A. is a modern general acute care Hospital in the Northern suburbs of Athens with 315 licensed hospital beds, 21 of which are the Intensive Care Unit. Since 2010, Hygeia is the first and only hospital in Greece to having earned Joint Commission International (JCI) Gold Seal of Approval^® for Hospital Accreditation, by demonstrating continuous compliance with its internationally recognized standards. With a potential of 1,250 employees (nursing, para-medical, medical and administrative personnel) as well as 850 associated physicians, aims to offer high quality medical services in the safest, most comfortable premises, with state-of-the-art technology and innovative medical services. Among priorities, is to fully address the growing demands of the patients and to keep up with the advancement of medical science.

Hygeia will be one of the pilots of the project. The hospital will contribute in the definition of the requirements in the various scenarios and will be the testbed for running the medical scenario. Hygeia will also have an active role in the dissemination and implementation of the results.

Established in 1962, the University of Trento (UNITN) is recognized as a leading academic institution in Italy and Europe for its quality of research and international outreach, particularly in ICT, economics, and sociology. The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) has more than 50 faculty members, and has hosted 200 full-time Ph.D. students and 100 researchers, becoming recognized as the top computer science department in Italy. The KnowDive research group has been in the forefront of research as well as industrial projects in cross-border data and knowledge integration, including the healthcare domain.

UniTN is in charge of designing and implementing cross-border data integration services for the project. UniTN provides tools and services for managing (defining, evolving) healthcare domain knowledge and terminologies, mappings between local, national, and international standards, as well as translation and NLP-based information extraction from medical text contained in health records.

The Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law, as part of University of Vienna School of Law (UNIVIE), seeks to address emerging legal questions in IT/IP law from a European perspective, with an emphasis on data protection and data security law as well as relevant fundamental rights and ethics issues. The department is composed of Academics and Research Fellows from diverse legal backgrounds (IP/IT law, public law, constitutional law). The head of the Department is Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Forgó, a full Professor in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.  As a partner in the project, the UNIVIE contributes its legal expertise, especially in the fields of data protection and data security. In particular UNIVIE is responsible for the Data Management Plan and the Legal/Ethical Helpdesk.

Established in 1971 and representing 36 National Nurses Associations, the EFN work has an effect on the daily work of 6 million nurses throughout the EU and Europe. As the independent voice of the nursing profession, the EFN provides a broad platform for developing health and social EU policy by supporting the European Union decision making process on all areas which affect the nursing profession as: education, workforce, quality & safety (including Digitalisation). Through its connections, the national, regional and local nursing experiences on these key topics can be brought up to the EU sphere to enrich the process and the further implementation of the results.

As partner in the project, the EFN will ensure a coherent engagement of the nurses, as end-users, in the co-design, and will contribute to establishing integrated EHR functionalities for healthcare professionals and boosting citizens’ empowerment. Having the experience of frontline testing/upscaling, deployment strategies and site visits, peer reviews, namely within the context of the EU projects, the EFN will support the validation phase and participate in defining the governance model, next to the dissemination activities.

Clinical activity on both in- and outpatients in the field of cardiovascular diseases, in a multi-organ perspective containing pulmonary, metabolic, neuro-endocrine and renal mechanisms and disorders, has been an essential component of Institute of Clinical Physiology (IFC) of Italian National Research Council (CNR) profile since its foundation in 1968, and enabling factors to become the largest Italian CNR Institute in 2002, with two hospital units located in Pisa and Massa. In 2007 CNR and Tuscany Region through formal decisions of the respective governing bodies, have decided to establish a new permanent joint entity (CNR/ Tuscany Region Foundation “Gabriele Monasterio” for Medical Research and Public Health http://www.ftgm.it) to which have been conferred the responsibilities and costs of running the hospital activities of IFC-CNR, within the same hospital setting, with the same personnel, and with the same relationship with CNR research, which have so far guided the IFC-CNR hospital activities.

FTGM facilities include a cutting-edge clinical imaging department, basic sciences, bioengineering, computer science laboratories and a large unit of experimental medicine. Moreover there are laboratories for molecular biology, genetics and artificial organs.

FTGM research covers a full spectrum from molecular biology to experimental and clinical medicine, clinical and environmental epidemiology, and health service  research, and is planned around four thematic areas: clinical, biological, technological, and epidemiological. Spanning in its aims from molecular mechanisms to the organs and the body as a whole, the biomedical staff interacts with non-medical scientists in the fields of physics, mathematics, electronics, computer science, chemistry and material science.

With an established record of collaboration with industry, technological research FTGM has been successful in the areas of artificial organs, bioengineering, medical electronics, signal and image processing, and in implementing an advanced ICT system integrating all clinical activities of FTGM.

Using a large experience on EHR systems modelling and development and standards development and early implementers (HL7 and DICOM), in this project FTGM is in charge of user requirements definition, including modelling of healthcare processes related to platform functionalities, and validation of results in terms of clinical protocols applied to real life instances of scenario depicted for an effective exchange of health-related data across borders.

CHU Liège aims at positioning itself as leader in the digital service to the patient. To that endeavor, CHU Liège has obtained the score of 6 (out of 7) on EMRAM. In the effort to continue improving its digital service, InteropEHRate will help CHU to pursue the highest score relative to Hospital, namely EMRAM 7. EMRAM 6 has attracted significant financial support from the Wallonia Health Ministry to CHU Liège. This support contributed to the collaboration between CHU Liège and Andaman7 for patients’ empowerment by promoting medical records transfer in their smartphones or tablets. InteropEHRate will further consolidate this collaboration by offering other empowerment tools such as integrated medical care pathways.

CHU Liège will contribute to the project by bringing its clinical and IT expertise as well as experiences in national EHR interoperability. Moreover, CHU will integrate the software and hardware assets produced by the technical partners into its infrastructure to run a pilot study about cross border health data exchange using smart devices

UBITECH will lead the activities of WP3, namely “HR Security and Privacy Controls”. UBITECH undertakes the responsibility of the specification and implementation of a set of conformance criteria and mechanisms, common interaction protocols and security APIs that will be exploited by all the components and applications of the InteropEHRate platform, to guarantee the fulfillment of security and privacy requirements. In particular, UBITECH will develop protocols for identity management (IDM), for device identification, as well as for encryption mechanics for (1) health data storage (on mobile devices and cloud services) and (2) health data exchange among S-EHR/EHR/EMR/Cloud services. Emphasis will be given in the adoption of protocols, regarding hashing, encryption, signing, that are considered battle-tested and unbroken. Moreover, regarding identity management, the capability of seamless integration with open solutions, that are considered de-facto solutions, will be a primary concern since it will broaden the applicability of the developed solution.

UPRC will be mainly involved in interopEHRate through the creation and configuration of data exchange protocols, offering its expertise on data sharing in the domains of both healthcare and interoperability. UPRC will coordinate the overall work in the context of developing protocols and APIs for the exchange of health data, through D2D and remote communication for healthcare and research purposes. In this domain, UPRC will parameterize and adapt already defined D2D data exchange protocols in the context of healthcare. Moreover, UPRC will also establish a Health Record index for storing the metadata related to a specific citizen. What is more, as the Quality Manager, UPRC will define the guidelines and processes to guarantee the quality on project, software, hardware, data and medical management. To this end, UPRC will also contribute in the creation of data mapping and conversion services, ensuring data exchange interoperability.

“Bagdasar-Arseni” Clinical Emergency Hospital of Bucharest (SCUBA) was created in 1975 as a national romanian reference center for neurosurgery. Currently, it is one of the most important emergency hospitals in Bucharest, serving a population of approximately 4 million inhabitants in Bucharest and neighbouring counties, with 558 continuous hospitalization beds and 5 day hospitalization beds. The hospital is the largest neurosurgery clinic in Romania and is maintained as a national reference centre in paediatric neurosurgery; spinal surgery; pituitary surgery; epilepsy surgery; fundamental research in neuroscience; neurorehabilitation; acute cardiovascular care and remote rehabilitation. By being a teaching hospital affiliated to the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Carol Davila the clinical personnel have also been involved in national and European projects related to fundamental and clinical research.

Within the project SCUBA will contribute for the healthcare-centric domain analysis and requirements and will be involved mainly in the real environment testing process of the developed tools.

SIVECO develops and exports software products and high value added consultancy projects to countries within the European Community, The Middle East, North Africa and the CIS area with his expertise in eLearning, eHealth, eAgriculture, eCustoms, eGovernment and eBusiness.

A notable project pertaining to the scope of the InteropEHRate project is the development of the Electronic Health Record [EHR] in Romania.

SIVECO will reuse the expertise gained during the national EHR development in InteropEHRate WP5 Incremental EHRs integration and develops the HealthCare Professional Application [HCP]. SIVECO is involvement into the validation of results, WP7, by insuring the environment set-up, deployment and training for the piloting activities. As a main industrial partner, SIVECO will be involved in dissemination activities in order to nurture a future market using InteropEHRate project results.

Realizing industry and research projects, the Healthcare department at Fraunhofer-Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST develops digitization strategies, secure and standardized data infrastructures, as well as approaches to medical data processing based on artificial intelligence.

Commissioned by members of the health economy, Fraunhofer ISST healthcare scientists focus their work on hospitals, by measuring the institution’s digital maturity through its very own Digital Health Maturity Index, as well as designing tailor-made digitization and innovation management strategies. Furthermore, by order of industry and software vendors, Fraunhofer ISST designs and implements secure IT infrastructures, based on international standards such as HL7 FHIR/CDA, IHE, DICOM, etc., monitors acceptance tests and creates specifications for healthcare IT systems, and also creates algorithmic procedures for data processing and artificial intelligence, in order to individualize therapies (e.g. medication) and identify and predict process based patterns.

Fraunhofer ISST has a leading role in designing and specifying the InteropEHRate interoperability profile based on HL7 FHIR, ensuring syntactic and semantic interoperability between all participating systems, and supports the standardization process of the newly developed protocols.

Iatrikos Syllogos Athinon (ISA) is the official body that represents the medical professionals of Athens and all the area of Attica Region apart the city of Piraeus. It is the largest and the oldest Medical Association in Greece as it has been founded in 1923, and it is supervised by Panhellenic Medical Association which is the College for all Medical Association in Greece.  As of March 2018, the Association has over 25.000 members covering the full spectrum of medical specialties. Nowadays, ISA engages in continuous political dialogue and consultation with healthcare stakeholders and the central government. Its activities span in three main pillars: Social support and inclusion activities, Training and lifelong learning activities and Political Dialogue and Policy Making.

As partner in the project, ISA will ensure the engagement of doctors in the co-design and the validation of the EHR functionalities, and will provide support on the formulation of EHR Governance model, taking into account socio-economic impact concerns and the actual regional/national healthcare operating model and regulations.   ISA will facilitate the dissemination of EHR results, mainly within the clinical and policy-oriented stakeholders.

Byte was founded in 1983 and it soon developed into one of the most important and biggest companies providing comprehensive IT and communications solutions in Greece. Its leading position in the Greek market today is the result of continuous investments in cutting-edge technologies and specialized human resources, in combination with powerful strategic partnerships with leading international organizations. As a result, Byte can provide its customers with access to high-quality, leading products, technologies and services.

According to its strategic development plan, Byte participates in companies with similar or supplementing business activities, in order to create a group of companies that will provide the most comprehensive and effective customer service in Greece and abroad.

SIMAVI develops and exports software products and high value added consultancy projects to countries within the European Community, The Middle East, North Africa and the CIS area with his expertise in eLearning, eHealth, eAgriculture, eCustoms, eGovernment and eBusiness. 

A notable project pertaining to the scope of the InteropEHRate project is the development of the Electronic Health Record [EHR] in Romania. 

SIMAVI replaced and continues the work of SIVECO by reusing the expertise gained during the national EHR development in InteropEHRate WP5 Incremental EHRs integration and develops the HealthCare Professional Application [HCP]. SIMAVI is involved in the validation of results, WP7, by ensuring the environment set-up, deployment and training for the piloting activities. As a main industrial partner, SIMAVI will be involved in dissemination activities in order to nurture a future market using InteropEHRate project results.