Momentum telemedicine service descriptions

ENDOBLOC (ES)

Objectives, expected outcomes, main beneficiaries

The full title of the service is ENDOBLOC – virtual community for clinical practice in endocrinology.

The overall objective is to serve as a virtual community of professionals working with endocrine illnesses (including diabetes and others) at the University Hospital Arnau de Vilanova (Lleida. They will collaborate together with primary care physicians and nurses in the country who use the official governmental platform, called e-Catalunya.

The service includes a project director (called the Cap endocrinologia), a community manager and a community moderator (primary care doctor).

The main beneficiaries are healthcare professionals.

Targeted population, number of patients

The target population is categorised as people with chronic conditions (e.g., who receive long-term monitoring or coaching) and patients undergoing specific treatment.

The service is a collaborative tool for professionals in primary-secondary care to treat clinical cases of endocrinology including people with diabetes 1 or diabetes 2. This virtual consultation facilitates diverse sorts of participatory processes, such as conducting online surveys, and organising wikis and forums. They are always about endocrinology.

Type of telemedicine service

The service is categorised as an interpretation service. The relationship between key actors in the service is primary care- secondary care / secondary care-secondary care/ primary care-primary care.

Set-up that was being replaced

This project is based on the implementation of a virtual community of health care professionals belonging to a Primary Health Care Centre and the Department of Endocrinology and Nutrition of a university hospital. The main objective is to manage the medical knowledge of this medical speciality, in order to provide benefits to endocrinological patients and health care professionals involved.

Outcomes and results expected after introduction

Having 213 professionals integrated in exchanging relevant information can save unneeded referrals and time consuming visits by patients to the specialists.

Detailed description

The service platform is e-Catalunya. The e- Catalunya platform is a shared service platform. It is part of the corporate technological infrastructure of the Generalitat de Catalonia.

The platform was designed to facilitate building communities of practice without having to incur further developments, software licensing acquisition or changes in installations. Communities of practice benefit instantly from any new platform versions provided by the project, without having to devote any specific attention to platform developments or adaptations.

The basic infrastructure is supported by Linux OS. It runs on Apache web servers, Tomcat application servers, and uses MySQL as a database engine and OpenLDAP to secure authentication processes. The portals are supported by the exoPlatform software platform, supported by Java Open Single Sign-On (JOSSO), which is an open source J2EE and Spring-based SSO infrastructure aimed at providing a solution for centralised, platform-neutral, user authentication and authorisation.

Operational status

The service is operational and is part of mainstream healthcare service.