Twelve partners from seven European countries are working on the vCare project. Our multidisciplinary consortium consists of researchers, healthcare providers and industry experts. Below, you can find out more about us.
The Technische Universität Dresden (TUD, www.tu-dresden.de) is one of the 10 largest universities in Germany and one of eleven German universities that were identified by the German government as an “University of Excellence“.
The coordinating Chair of Wirtschaftsinformatik, especially Systems Development (TUD-WISE, https://tu-dresden.de/bu/wirtschaft/sysent) at TUD’s Faculty of Business and Economics focuses on the demand-oriented analysis, design and maintenance of enterprise information systems, i.e. the information-processing parts of private sector companies and public administration. The chair has been working on the application of the theories of business information systems in different domains (e.g. health care, industry, energy) for several years by now, working closely together with the practice. The Chair coordinates the vCARE project and ensures the embedding of the partners’ inputs into the overall approach. In particular, TUD will lead WP6.
The TUD has extensive experience in project coordination and project management at national and international level and is therefore well placed to coordinate this project. A European Project Center (EPC) has been established at TUD to support international project management. The TUD-EPC will lead on financial, legal and administrative issues during the implementation of this project.
Casa di Cura Privata del Policlinico SPA (CCP, www.ccppdezza.it/en/) is a fully integrated multi-specialty private clinical centre aiming at providing both inpatient and outpatient services mainly directed to neurological patients. CCP is constituted in a Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences and offers chronic neurological patients the highest comprehensive standards of care in a comfortable living environment. The main objective of clinical interventions pertains to the rehabilitation of patients with different types of brain-lesions, for instance those lesions due to acute events such as cerebral stroke or traumatic brain injury. An increasing number of admissions also concerns chronic patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. CCP meets all the conditions and facilities where clinical investigations on innovative technologies could be performed, in terms of rehabilitation spaces, infrastructures and laboratories, that all together support the concept of “living lab”. It will support the project using all requested technologies. The pilot will be guested in the Neurorehabilitation Sciences Department.
Stiftung FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik am Karlsruher Institut für Technnologie (FZI, https://www.fzi.de/) is a non-profit research and technology transfer centre comprising 14 R&D teams – each of them directed by a professor also holding a chair for computer science, electrical or mechanical engineering, or business, administration at the Karlsruher Institute for Technology (KIT) – Germany‘s oldest and one of its most successful technical universities. FZI helps its partners and customers in applying novel information technologies to realize new and better products, services and business processes. FZI is a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a member of NESSI, it participates in the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) program, it establishes together with Microsoft a .NET-based centre for Innovative Software Concepts, and it won several contracts from the European HPMT Programme to act as a Marie-Curie Training Centre. The main role of FZI in the Personalized Virtual Coach will be the leading of the WP 4 and the participation in other technical WPs. The focus of FZI lies in the conceptualization and development of holistic artificial and semantic monitoring and reasoning framework for personalized clinical pathways.
Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (AIT,
http://www.ait.ac.at/) is Austria’s largest non-university research organisation and aims significantly contribute to solve major challenges of the society related to mobility, energy, health, environment, safety and security. The business unit Biomedical Systems deals with intelligent technologies for smart homes, health support and ambient assisted living (AAL) for many years. The research focus is on human behavior recognition, AAL middleware platforms and services as well as responsive context-aware user interaction, but also applications in health care and medicine. “Biomedical Systems” has worked on sensor based modelling and service platforms already in a couple of national and international co-funded research projects mainly for older adults using of-the-shelf sensor technology. As a technical partner with the Biomedical Systems business unit, AIT will significantly contribute to this project in terms of intelligent user interaction, middle ware technologies and human behavior recognition.
MySphera SL (MYS, www.mysphera.com) is a fast-growing global company based in Valencia, Spain, spin–off of TSB Group, dedicated to develop and commercialize our location & workflow systems that are tailored to the needs of acute care hospitals, which we have successfully proven in several installations – world-wide and is already leading the Spanish market. Our vision is to empower Clinicians, Patients, and Healthcare Management worldwide with smart sensor-driven on-demand actionable information and data analytics to improve patient care outcomes while increasing efficient management of resources in hospitals, senior living, and patient homes. MYS’s solution gives hospitals flexibility and speed, so they can analyse and react using real-time information, creating improved operational efficiency in their organization and safe hard money. Our goal is for them to realize a swift time-tobenefit and maximize their ROI. To reach this we are using our innovative real-time location platform SPHERAONE and our best-in-class software MYHOSPITAL. R&D Department will collaborate in the project with the Production Department who is in charge of the material acquisitions and hardware production.
Servicio Vasco de Salud Osakidetza (OSA, http://www.osakidetza.euskadi.eus) is the public healthcare service of the Basque Country (north of Spain). OSA was created by the Health Department of the Basque Government. All the public hospitals and primary care centers of the Basque Region are under this organization. Hospital Universitario Cruces (HUC, http://www.hospitalcruces.com) was created in 1955 and has three main tasks: health assistance, teaching and research. Movement Disorders and Autonomic Disorders Unit at HUC is highly focused on phenotypic characterization of genetic variants of Lewy body diseases and surgery therapy (Deep Brain Stimulation). OSA will be mainly involved in the Economic evaluation about the set-up of the Virtual Coach Platform to measure the effectiveness in terms of quality of life (QoL) for the patients in comparison with the usual clinical practice.
Milan based Imaginary SRL (IMA, www.i-maginary.it) are one of the longest established and most respected European Serious Games companies (SME). Since its formation in 2004, imaginary has built an enviable reputation for its multi-disciplinary specialisation in the rapidly growing serious games and gamification market place. IMA will be responsible for the game based coaching services for all the three test beds within WP5 and for their exchange of information with the virtual coach. In order to design the services IMA will collaborate with WP1 to define user requirements as well as evaluation activities. IMA will also strongly support dissemination and exploitation activities.
European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL, www.ehtel.eu) is the leading forum for decision makers and doers in Europe, engaged in supporting the transformation of the health care practice in Europe through eHealth. The association brings together under one roof a wide range of constituencies crucial for the betterment of health and social care with health IT. They include: National and regional health authorities and systems, Hospitals and other health institutions, Public and private insurance providers, Health professionals, Health managers and executives, Patients, Citizens and consumers, Industry, and Researchers and academics. EHTEL provides a platform for information, representation, networking and cooperation to its 60+ corporate members. With EHTELconnect (www.ehtelconnect.eu), the association draw on the expertise of EHTEL’s highly experienced and multi-stakeholder membership to offer expert advice and educational services tailored to the needs of individuals and organisations working in the field of digital healthcare. EHTEL will also lead WP9 “Communication and Expoitation” within the v-CARE project.
Universitatea de Medicina si farmacie ‘Carol Davila’ din Bucuresti (UMFCD, www.umf.ro) from Bucharest, founded over 150 years ago, is the largest and most important medical academic institution in Romania. The University grants access to high-tech diagnostic and research Platforms, being an active partner in various Projects / Grants (FP6, FP7, Erasmus and National Projects). The Cardiology Department within the University
gathers important authorities in the field of cardiology in Romania. UMFCD will be involved in the experimentation site preparation and clinical testing of the cardiovascular rehabilitation Use Case solution. It will assist in collecting the specific medical and technical requirements. Furthermore, it will have extensive activity in dissemination and popularization of the solution trough organising thematic workshops, participating at national and international conferences with presentations and publishing scientific articles.
The Department of Business Development and Technology (BTECH) is part of Aarhus BSS, one of the four faculties at Aarhus Universitet (AU, http://btech.au.dk). Aarhus BSS holds the distinguished accreditations AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS for its business-related activities. BTECH is home to a number of externally funded knowledge and research centres, including one Nordic Centre of Excellence and a Stanford Peace Innovation Lab in collaboration with Stanford University. BTECH’s research is anchored with five professorships and includes innovation and business development, entrepreneurship, energy technologies, IT development, climate adaptation and the wind energy industry. AU will manage the Danish reference trial of the v-CARE project by defining pilot requirement, supporting the local ethical approvals, recruiting subjects, running the local pilots and evaluating the results. AU will also be active in dissemination activities and business modelling.
Innovation Sprint (iSPRINT, www.innovationsprint.eu) is an SME that has been launched by innovation experts, offering bespoke services to companies and organizations that seek to pivot and add value to their products and services in the digital era. iSPRINT offering includes two healthcare products (CloudCare2U, Actionable Health 360o), which involve the collection and analysis of in-home patient data in a cloud environment. CloudCare2U is the exploitable outcome of the flagship FP7 eWall project and entails the collection and processing of data from patients based on a wide array of in-home and wearable devices. iSPRINT is the owner of CloudCare2U platform, as the official exploitation company of the eWALL project. Based on this experience, iSPRINT will support the operations of designing the v-CARE platform and will have an active participation in the exploitation, as solution provider.
SIVECO Romania SA (SIV, www.siveco.ro, http://rd.siveco.ro) is a private shareholder company, established in 1992, located in Bucharest, Romania. During its twenty three years of experience, SIV has become the largest Romanian software development company and provider of software solutions like ERM L&M (Enterprise Resource Management License and Maintenance), eGovernment, eLearning, eHealth, eAgriculture, eCustoms solutions and turnkey projects acting both on the internal and international markets, and one of the most successful software integrators from Central and Eastern Europe.