Richard

Richard: Regional ICT based Clusters for Healthcare Applications and R&D Integration

(October 2010 / September 2013)

  • Programme: FP7 Capacities – Region of Knowledge – FP7-REGIONS-2010-1
  • Project Coordinator: Regione Toscana (Italy)
  • Scientific Coordinator: Signo Motus
  • Consortium: 15 partners (IT, SE, UK, PL)

Abstract

The RICHARD project arises from the need to make healthcare systems more efficient. The project intends to define and implement innovative models for the management of Chronic conditions based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in four different European Regions, setting up a shared trans-regional collaboration framework among all the health and e-health stakeholders to implement innovative Chronic Care territorial pathways integrating research topics and research results.
RICHARD’s rationale is to enable the shift from “disease focused” ICT applications to “sustainable and territorial chronic care models”, where innovation is driven by the system needs. Despite the long-term vision concerns an integrated Chronic Care Model, a gradual “disease driven” approach is taken, to deal effectively with the complexity of the envisaged change in the short-medium term perspective.
The project plans to carry out on three types of pathologies: Stroke (Italy), Dementia (Sweden) and Diabetes (United Kingdom).
The involved regions (Tuscany - IT, Västerbotten - SE, Yorkshire - UK, Lodz - PL) will contribute with their leading experience in terms of technologies, research results and organizational models related to the chosen clinical application and will benefit from their complementarities. Signo Motus is involved as project scientific coordinator.

The main RICHARD Project objectives are:

  • Improve the implementation of ICT based models for the delivery of healthcare services for the management of chronic diseases at regional level;
  • Advice each regional authority on the potentialities of the territory with view to allow consistent programming policies (the Joint Action Plan vision);
  • Propose clinical pathways integrating research topics and research results towards an innovative ICT based chronic care model (JAP-Joint Action Plan);
  • Benefit from synergies across the regions relating to innovative clinical pathways for the delivery;
  • Accelerate regional and trans-regional cooperation with the design of a shared collaboration framework based on research and innovation.