[Sandra]

In Spain, it has been recently released a study about e-health maturity level.

About telemedicine, the main conclusions are:

– Digital communication between professionals and patients remains at low level. (Level of maturity: 18.9%)

– Tele-monitoring is mostly being used in small-scale pilots (Level of maturity 11,9% – very low). It’s very important to encourage the use of telemonitoring in chronic diseases to ensure sustainability.

– Instant messaging between professionals and patients is only being used in a few regions.

– Tele-consultation: Only available at a decent level in 2 regions.

After COVID, telemedicine has experienced an 80-100% increase in its use in some specialties. Some countries like France or South Korea have even changed their regulations to accommodate this urgent need for telemedicine.

Will these advances remain when the COVID-19 is gone?

[Sandra]

Dear Joachim, 

Our health research institute doesn’t have much experience with AAL programmes, but I think we definitively should take the leap and participate. In Spain, ageing and chronic diseases is a matter of great concern since our life expentancy keeps growing but also the number of people with multiple chronic diseases that affect their quality of life and have great impact on the economy and society as a whole.

I think right now we don’t have a technology problem but a usability problem. Usability is always important but especially for the elderly. We need to take advantage of all the IoT tools we have available right now to monitor and gather data of our patients without them needing to interact with the tools. This has to be done effortlessly. 

In addition to this, factors other than health must be taken into account that influence active ageing (mobility, socialization, purpose…) and use technology to tackle them. 

Best regards, 

Sandra Rueda Charro, MD

[Sandra]

Dear partners, 

In Madrid Spain (and I guess this problem is also faced in other places) we have a curious situation. Sometimes we have in different hospitals the same EHR provider. The application is the same but still, there’s no interoperability and information cannot be shared among those centers. 

I think our current EHRs were designed with some goals (old goals) like improving patient’s safety and bringing all the information together (older applications had different modules for each service (lab, radiology, pathology…). An EHR development takes years, so now we are “enjoying” this old solutions while we are facing new problems. 

Maybe, now we can  start developing the EHRs of the future, with the developments needed today (Like said in the group description “(1) tracking, an electronic medical record and Med IS into a pan-European, if not larger “Big Data” collective that would enable certain elements of the casualty records to be used to assist a machine learning model (AI) for decision-assist systems, (2) predictive tools and (3) a process of integrated resource management.” and other functionalities like integrated genomic information). 

This is already being done by some companies like Cerner and someday we will receive this improvement (I hope this will happen be soon). Europe should force this companies to follow some standards to pave the way for this interoperability

[Sandra]

Dear all, 

I live in Madrid, and as in Italy we’re  struggling fiercely against Covid-19. I think people isn’t still aware of the problem´s severity, and it has been necessary for the government (through army and police) to start imposing sanctions on those who break out of confinement. Maybe governments need to be harder on their communications and show what is really happening on the intensive care units. There’s not enough equipment (mainly ventilators) and the situation keeps getting worse. 

Beside that, I think we are not as organized as Koreans or Chinese for example. They got it perfectly and started to make “driving tests” of coronavirus, building tent hospitals, delivering food to people (so they don’t have to go shopping in this situation…). In Spain, people keeps going almost everyday to the supermarket just to gou outside of their homes. They’re definitely not getting it.

About medical services, they are also recruiting retired physicians and nurses aswell, and medical doctors from other specialties (neurology, pediatrics, endocrinology…). The army is activated too at this point. 

Do you think  restrictions and the lock down should be stricter?

Best regards,

Sandra Rueda Charro, MD

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by  Sandra.

[Sandra]

Smart glasses can be successfully used in situations where telemedicine is needed. Paramedics can get advice from specialists in situations where they have less experience. However, it may not be helpful to always use these smart glasses because they add workload to the paramedic in the end.

Another possible disadvantage is staff’s resistance to change due to lack of training. The use of this disruptive technologies must always be accompanied by an increase in the digital skills training of our workers.

Schaer, Roger & Müller, Henning & Widmer, Antoine. (2016). Using Smart Glasses in Medical Emergency Situations, a Qualitative Pilot Study. 1-5. 10.1109/WH.2016.7764556. 

[Sandra]

Thank you so much Inge! 

So by now, their action could be summarized in: 

– “High level of testing among a wide sample of the German population”. They have tested not only severe cases, but also young people with mild cases. 

– Unlike other countries, they don’t have a centralized lab, so there are a lot of labs that can run tests with quality. 

– Early action on:  social distancing, closing schools and most retail businesses, isolating Covid cases. 

– Despite this facts, their health minister claims that mortality rates can increase as they are “at the very beginning of the wave compared to other countries”.

[Sandra]

Thank you Inge for your reply. Actually Germany’s performance against covid 19 is one of the most exemplary in europe. 

Is there any information about how are they keeping such a low mortality rate? 

Best regards, 

Sandra Rueda, MD

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by  Sandra.