EU’s WELCOME project

Reports estimate that by 2030 COPD will be the 4th largest cause of global mortality according to the World Health Organization. Also, many patients diagnosed with COPD may also suffer from closely-related chronic diseases including heart failure, diabetes, and depression.

The European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for R&D is funding an ongoing project called WELCOME www.welcome-project.eu that has been running since November 2013 and will end in 2017. The plans are to create a technology solution to produce more effective ways to integrate care and enable patients to self-manage their COPD.

The technology solution will need to combine a smart vest including sensors to measure and monitor specific COPD patient indicators and will need to also include patient and environmental information.

The goal is to provide real-time data to be automatically uploaded to highly secure cloud-based patient medical records so that patients, clinicians, and health professionals will be able to monitor and manage integrated personalized care plans.

The project calls for technology to also monitor and analyze multiple data such as physiological, environmental, emotional, and genetic data to be used to design personalized integrated care applications.

These applications range from providing self-care guidance to providing secondary healthcare support. This support can include telemonitoring and remote support or provide comprehensive expert support at the clinic.

Validation for the project will be conducted on a small-scale with the impact of the project on healthcare to be studied in five countries to include Greece, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands.

In late August 2016, the first sensor and vest prototypes were delivered to clinical partners at Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU) where 50 participants took part. The sensor system was installed and clinicians are positively pleased.

In addition, the project is expected to strengthen the European industrial position in eHealth along with developing products that will provide for independent living products and services but at the same time, provide for new business ventures.

The total budget for the project is 8,272.080 €. The full name for the project is “Wearable Sensing and Smart Cloud Computing for Integrated Care to COPD Patients and Comorbidities” (FP7-ICT-2013-10). For more information, email Andreas Raptopoulos at arap@exus.co.uk.