Telemed5000

Development of a smart system for subsidiary telemedical care for large groups of cardiological risk patients

Application industry: Healthcare
Technology area: Machine learning; data and service management

Telemed5000 is developing a smart system that enables the telemedical care of large groups of patients with a chronic heart condition.

The baseline
Around 2.5 million patients in Germany suffer from chronic heart failure. Heart failure is thus the most common health-related reason for hospital stays. Subsidiary telemedical care for high-risk patients can improve early detection, reduce the number of inpatient stays, and consequently reduce costs. However, with very large numbers of cases, telemedicine will quickly reach its limits in terms of human resources, technical equipment, and the healthcare sector.

The project goal
Up to now, telemedicine centres (TMZ) have been able to care for a maximum of 500 patients at the same time; future plans call for up to 5,000 to ensure that care for this chronic disease can be provided in line with demand. For this, vital data recorded by the patient at home using modern smartphone technology is transferred to a data protection-compliant electronic health record and pre-analysed by an AI-supported decision support system. The system not only evaluates classic vital signs, such as heart rate, ECG, blood pressure, or weight-based on historical patient data but also analyses new parameters, such as voice and physical activity as prognosis markers for mortality and morbidity due to heart failure. Self-learning algorithms help medical staff to decide whether a critical situation exists for a patient. Telemed5000 thus reduces the workload of medical staff and increases the care capacity per telemedicine centre. At the end of the project, the solution will be evaluated in a study with 100 patients.

Application and practical benefit
Telemed5000 considerably improves the medical care of risk patients with a chronic heart condition. This is because telemedical support for specialists and general practitioners can detect at an early stage that a condition is beginning to worsen. At the same time, hospital stays and treatment costs are reduced. The system additionally enables nationwide patient care even in structurally weak rural regions.

Term: 1 August 2019 to 31 December 2022

Telemed5000 is a joint German-Austrian project.

Consortium: Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (lead member), GETEMED Medizin und Informationstechnik AG, University of Potsdam – Hasso Plattner Institute, SYNIOS Document & Workflow-Management GmbH, Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems, Austrian Institute of Technology – AIT Graz

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Köhler
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
friedrich.koehler@charite.de

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