Today, a wealth of information and data on patients exists, but is scattered across different platforms and systems. This makes it very hard to use this data effectively to improve patient care.
The aim of new IHI project IMPROVE is to develop an evidence-based, real-time framework capable of integrating information from patient reported outcome and experience measures (PROMs and PREMs) and patient preference information (PPI), including real-world data from m-health and e-health technologies such as wearable devices and mobile apps. By drawing on this Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD), the IMPROVE framework will deliver new insights into the real-life behaviour of, and challenges faced by, patients of all ages living with complex health problems.
The IMPROVE framework will be integrated into an online platform designed to facilitate the smart use of patient inputs and evidence in the development of integrated healthcare solutions.
“In IMPROVE we will use a variety of sources to test and validate how we can make better use of patient-reported outcomes, such as PROMs, PREMs, and PPIs,” said IMPROVE industry lead Hans Peeters from Philips in the Netherlands. “During the project we will have a better understanding of the way we can use patient reported outcomes to test and validate with our partners solutions that we develop within Philips to provide hospitals and decision makers with more robust evidence to implement the solutions in healthcare provision in a faster and more coherent way.”
IMPROVE exploitation manager, Claudia Navarro of Medtronic in Spain, adds: “In Medtronic we develop several healthcare solutions and knowing that the clinical effectiveness of these solutions is also supported by the perception and evaluation of patients themselves is the way to move forward to have a more comprehensive evaluation of the solutions we develop and improve the way we work”.
The platform will be tested via 10 use cases covering 5 disease areas (ophthalmology, oncology, cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation, and neurology) in different European countries to increase the impact of the project.
“Sustainable, trustworthy, and productive public-private collaborations, implemented through governance models and an industrial framework for healthcare will be at the core of the project activities,” said project coordinator Giuseppe Fico of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain. “For this reason, the living lab approach that IMPROVE has included for the design, production and implementation phases of the project solutions will be fundamental, as well as the involvement of relevant international standard bodies, certification authorities and decision maker towards the introduction in the market of harmonised solutions for the adoption of PROMs, PREMs, PPI and PGHD in real practices.”
Ultimately, by placing the patient at the centre of the system, the IMPROVE platform should advance the use of information on patient preferences and experiences in treatment selection decisions and medical device design. The project also hopes its framework will facilitate the faster market entry of patient-centric, cost-effective integrated care solutions that are able to improve the healthcare delivery.
“Within PredictBy, we use large and heterogenous datasets to provide evidence-based recommendations to policy makers and healthcare providers,” said IMPROVE project manager Frans Folkvord of PredictBy in Spain. “The IMPROVE project is a perfect example of the way we work, by integrating different ways of collecting and using Patient Generated Health Data and find a more (cost-) effective and efficient way to use these data collections to improve health outcomes for patients.”