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EMISPHER - Euro-Mediterranean Internet-Satellite Platform for Health, Medical, Education and Research - 110
Eumedis Project number: 110
EC Project code: 110
Contract "signature" date: 2002-08-05
Planned start date: 2002-09-01
Planned duration: 28 months
Planned end date: 2004-12-31
Actual start date: 2002-09-01
Total Budget: 2.350.101,00 ?
EC Contribution:
1.774.327,00 €
Sector: Healthcare networks
Background:
EMISPHER aims at:
(i) establishing an equal access, for all countries of the Euro-Mediterranean area, to the quality of service which is required for the delivery of on-line services for health care;
(ii) widely promoting and disseminating high priority application services; and,
(iii) developing a sustainable economic model for a minimum set of quality services.
It puts together the cutting edge European technology developed in the frame of previous EC funded projects, to provide an integrated Internet and Satellite platform dedicated to health applications, and covering the whole Euro-Mediterranean area. Mature satellite technologies can be cost-effective if combined with appropriate internet application services, to guarantee the required bandwidth when and where it is required and therefore achieve the required quality of service.
The relevance of the project lies in the importance of extending the e-learning and the real time telemedicine services according to the local need assessments. In Algeria 10 public health-related institutions are connected through optic fibres. Within June 2004 a LAN network will be finalized with 13 University Hospitals and 21 out of 32 Specialized Hospitals, with 4 multipoint stations with 50 potential users each. The capacity of the system will be in the meantime extended from 2 up to 8 MB. The connection of other facilities up to regional hospitals is planned, up to a potential of 800 users. The Turkish Partner, ISTEM, is connected through an ISDN system with 2 Medical faculties and 5 hospitals, a LAN system will connect 14 hospitals and 48 Univ. Teaching Hospitals, 7 point to point seats already work. In Egypt there is 95% ISDN coverage, plans for a pilot model with 2 central locations, 3 hospitals in rural areas, 1 equipped moving vehicle. In Tunisia an ISDN network connects all University Teaching Hospitals and some regional hospitals.
Objectives:
Overall Objectives
• Interconnection of Euro-Mediterranean telemedicine services through an integral internet-satellite network.
Specific Objectives
• To improve the quality of the health care system of the Euro-Mediterranean countries through the applications of tele-medicine based on the existing experiences of European projects and the local experiences in the Mediterranean partners.
Description:
Three results are envisaged:
i) the extension of e-learning,
ii) the development of a widely available, interactive communication network, up to a real-time telemedicine,
iii) the provision of quality medical assistance to target persons.
Three priority applications will be hosted: (i) e-learning applications to develop the concept of cross-Mediterranean Virtual Medical University and establish a permanent medical and scientific link and contribute to limit corresponding emigration flows; (ii) real-time applications for remote expertise and second opinion and foster cross-Mediterranean cooperation at expert level or for research; (iii) shared management of the medical assistance file in case of repatriation of travellers or expatriates, a service which is expected to significantly contribute to the community of care throughout the whole Euro-Mediterranean arc, tourism constitutes a major source of income and Europeans constitute the main cohort of foreign visitors. Improving the image of medical care in relation to tourism is considered of major interest, particularly as an increasing number of ageing populations is travelling.
A network of 10 expert centres will be permanently interconnected and create a network of contributing medical centres able to foster the widest cooperation in the long term. These centres will be equipped with bi-directional satellite terminals enabling a permanent mesh connection between the various regional areas of up to 2Mbps. It is the intention of the project to extend this network to up to 25 centres, on the basis of public regional and private initiatives. They will work as "hub" centres for a wider network, built on the existing cooperation in the medical assistance area, constituted of 250 medical centres. These centres will be interconnected enabling the exchange of multimedia patient record elements and the electronic management of the workflow in relation with medically assisted repatriations. Awareness of the users, exchange of experiences and dissemination, training of a large number of users will be organised mainly through 4 major international events funded by the project and organised in Morocco, Cyprus, Egypt and Turkey. Such events will be open to the wider medical community.
The beneficiaries are divided into three categories:
i) hospitals and medical universities in the Mediterranean basin;
ii) students, individual health professionals, private clinics/insurance companies; and,
iii) the public in general.
The activities are divided into 7 work packages, concerning the 3 results (WP 2, 3 and 4 respectively) together with the necessary complementary horizontal actions (coordination and management, WP1, network deployment and monitoring, WP 5, dissemination and exploitation, WP 6, results evaluation, WP 7).
Results:
1. E-learning, sharing of experiences, techniques, libraries and databases, up to the concept of a virtual medical university are established within the Partners.
2. The development of a widely available, interactive, reliable, extendable and easy to use communication network, up to a real-time telemedicine, with second opinion services, video conferences, standardized protocols is operational between the selected points.
3. The provision of quality medical assistance to target persons as tourists, EU residents in the Mediterranean countries, immigrants is experimented.
Project Management:
Structural elements:
• Project Co-ordinator - Charitè: responsible for the overall administration and co-ordination of the EMISPHER project;
• Project Manager - TTSA: Project Management and main contact point on behalf of the Project co-ordinator for information exchange with the EC and the partners
• Day-to-day Management Team: TTSA, Eutelsat
• Project Management Committee: highest decision making board of the project; composed by the work package leaders, the project co-ordinator and the project manager.
• Workgroup Technique: formed by sub workgroups concerned with specific technical questions of the network,
• Workgroup Medicine: formed by interdisciplinary and thematic workgroups.
The interdisciplinary workgroup is responsible for the regional and national interdisciplinary conferences.
Web site: http://www.emispher.org/
Project Coordinator: GEORGI, GRASCHEW (more details ...)
Project Manager: THEO A., ROELOFS (more details ...)
Leading partner
Participating Partners
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