(New SkyCare) NEw Ways for Self-management Knowlegde to Yield up CARE

Project summary

SkyCare is the first European initiative to establish a virtual hospital that will be able to service patients independently of their home country. The initial focus will be on patients in the Netherlands and Sweden afflicted by diabetes type II and chronic heart failure.
The goal of the initiative is to create a scalable Medical Service Centre, which can be expanded to other countries and can be used for other medical conditions. This is achieved by a flexible and open IT architecture with three unique features:

1. It connects existing eHealth tools and patients to an open central scalable platform.
2. It adds new algorithms to analyse the data.
3. It monitors the data via a new 24/7 Medical Service Centre, which contacts patients and healthcare providers when necessary, and enables research.

Activities are divided into multiple work packages, including:

• IT-integration of eHealth self-management tools;
• drawing up data security and GDPR-proof frameworks;
• establishing the physical medical service centre and protocols;
• preparing two medical pilots with a total of 300 patients at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm (Sweden).

SkyCare will have a positive impact on cost reduction, quality of care and accessibility because:

• eHealth tools have been known to inspire more healthy lifestyles and self-management;
• continuous monitoring of vital health signs enabled by eHealth tools has been proven to help set more accurate diagnoses and initiate the proper follow-up actions;
• patients enjoy the comfort of access to their own health data and easier remote access to health professionals.