The Social Platform: Profiling FHIR to Support Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

The care networks of community-dwelling older adults require cooperation between different actors, including health and social caregivers, assistant providers, care receivers, and their informal caregivers (e.g. relatives or friends), across time, space, and organizational boundaries. In this context, the project Social Cooperation for Integrated Assisted Living (SOCIAL) aims at the development of a platform of services to support the care networks of community-dwelling older adults. Therefore, the study reported in this article assess the adequacy of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to guarantee the interoperability of the relevant information related to the assisted persons of the SOCIAL platform, which are mainly older adults that need care and assistance services.

Extended Reality Solutions in Medical Context and Educational Approaches.

The healthcare sector is growing in importance as people continue to age and pandemics complicate the boundary conditions of such systems. The number of innovative approaches to solve singular tasks and problems in this area is only slowly increasing. This is particularly evident when looking at medical technology planning, medical training and process simulation. In this paper a concept for versatile digital improvements to these problems by using state of the art development methods of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are presented. The programming and design of the software is done with the help of Unity Engine, which provides an open interface for docking with the developed framework for future work. The solutions were tested under domain specific environments and have shown good results and positive feedback.

Immersive Spatial Planning in Healthcare: Developing a Pipeline to Automatically Convert Computer Aided DesignData to Virtual Reality.

Equipping rooms used for medical purposes, like e.g., intensive care units, is an expensive and time-consuming task. In order to avoid extensive subsequent adjustments due to inappropriate layout visualization or geometric conditions difficult to identify in 2D plans, it is of utmost importance to provide an optimal planning environment to future users such as physicians and nurses. In this paper we present the concept of a fully automatized pipeline, which is designed to visualize computer aided design (CAD) data using virtual reality (VR). The immersive VR experience results in improvement of efficiency in the decision-making process during the planning phase due to better spatial imagination. The pipeline was successfully tested with CAD data from existing Intensive Care Units. The results indicate that the pipeline can be a valuable tool in the field of spatial planning in healthcare, due to simple usage and fast conversion of CAD data. The next step will be the development of a plugin for CAD tools to allow for interactions with the CAD models in Virtual Reality, which is not yet possible without manual intervention.

Bluetooth Low Energy Peripheral Android Health App for Educational and Interoperability Testing Purposes.

Based on recent telemonitoring activities in Austria for enabling integrated health care, the communication interfaces between personal health devices (e.g. blood pressure monitor) and personal health gateway devices (e.g. smartphone, routing received information to wide area networks) play an important role. In order to ease testing of the Bluetooth Low Energy interface functionality of the personal health gateway devices, a personal health device simulator was developed. Based on specifications from the Bluetooth SIG a XML software test configuration file structure is defined that declares the specific features of the personal health devices simulated. Using this configuration file, different scenarios are defined, e.g. send a single measurement result from a blood pressure reading or sending multiple (historic) weight scale readings. The simulator is intended to be used for educational purposes in lectures, where the number of physical personal health devices can be reduced and learning can be improved. It could be shown that this simulator assists the development process of mHealth applications by reducing the time needed for development and testing.

Evaluation of Standards for Access Control Enabling PHR-S Federation.

The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile applications in the healthcare may transform the healthcare industry by offering better disease tracking and management as well as patient empowerment. Unfortunately, almost all of these new systems set up their own ecosystem and to be really valuable for the care process they need to be integrated or federated with user managed access control services based on international standards and profiles to enable interoperability. Thus, this work presents the results of an evaluation of available specifications for federated authorization, based on a set of basic requirements.

Propose of Standards Based IT Architecture to Enrich the Value of Allergy Data by Telemonitoring Data.

Interoperability is a key requirement for any IT-System to be future proof and cost efficient, due to the increasing interaction of IT-Systems in Healthcare. This feasibility study is part of a larger project focusing on the conceptualization and evaluation of interoperable and modular IT-Framework components for exchanging big data information sets. Hence, this project investigates the applicability of a standard based IT-Architecture for the integration of Personal Health Devices data and open data sources. As a proof of concept use case, pollen forecast data from the Medical University of Vienna were combined with Personal Health Device data and a data correlation was investigated. The standards were identified as well as selected in expert's reviewed and the Architecture was designed based on a literature research. Subsequently the prototype was implemented and successfully tested in interoperability tests. The study shows that the architecture meets the requirements. It can be flexibly extended according to further requirements due to its generic setup. However, further extensions of the Interoperability-Connector and a full test setup needs to be realized in future.

Biosignals, Standards and FHIR - The Way to Go?

BACKGROUND: Standards have become available to share semantically encoded vital parameters from medical devices, as required for example by personal healthcare records. Standardised sharing of biosignal data largely remains open. OBJECTIVES: The goal of this work is to explore available biosignal file format and data exchange standards and profiles, and to conceptualise end-to-end solutions. METHODS: The authors reviewed and discussed available biosignal file format standards with other members of international standards development organisations (SDOs). RESULTS: A raw concept for standards based acquisition, storage, archiving and sharing of biosignals was developed. The GDF format may serve for storing biosignals. Signals can then be shared using FHIR resources and may be stored on FHIR servers or in DICOM archives, with DICOM waveforms as one possible format. CONCLUSION: Currently a group of international SDOs (e.g. HL7, IHE, DICOM, IEEE) is engaged in intensive discussions. This discussion extends existing work that already was adopted by large implementer communities. The concept presented here only reports the current status of the discussion in Austria. The discussion will continue internationally, with results to be expected over the coming years.

Development of a virtual lab for practical eLearning in eHealth.

In recent years an ongoing development in educational offers for professionals working in the field of eHealth has been observed. This education is increasingly offered in the form of eLearning courses. Furthermore, it can be seen that simulations are a valuable part to support the knowledge transfer. Based on the knowledge profiles defined for eHealth courses a virtual lab should be developed. For this purpose, a subset of skills and a use case is determined. After searching and evaluating appropriate simulating and testing tools six tools were chosen to implement the use case practically. Within an UML use case diagram the interaction between the tools and the user is represented. Initially tests have shown good results of the tools' feasibility. After an extensive testing phase the tools should be integrated in the eHealth eLearning courses.

Development of Knowledge Profiles for International eHealth eLearning Courses.

Professionals working in the multidisciplinary field of eHealth vary in their educational background. However, knowledge in the areas of medicine, engineering and management is required to fulfil the tasks associated with eHealth sufficiently. Based on the results of an analysis of national and international educational offers a survey gathering user requirements for the development of knowledge profiles in eHealth was conducted (n=75) by professionals and students. During a workshop the first results were presented and discussed together with the network partners and the attendees. The resulting knowledge profiles contain knowledge areas of all three thematic content categories including fundamentals of medical terminology, standards and interoperability and usability as well as basics of all three content categories. The knowledge profiles are currently applied in a master's degree programme at the UAS Technikum Wien and will be developed further.

Applicability of IHE/Continua components for PHR systems: learning from experiences.

Capturing personal health data using smartphones, PCs or other devices, and the reuse of the data in personal health records (PHR) is becoming more and more attractive for modern health-conscious populations. This paper analyses interoperability specifications targeting standards-based communication of computer systems and personal health devices (e.g. blood pressure monitor) in healthcare from initiatives like Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and Continua Health Alliance driven by industry and healthcare professionals. Furthermore it identifies certain contradictions and gaps in the specifications and suggests possible solutions. Despite these shortcomings, the specifications allow fully functional implementations of PHR systems. Henceforth, both big business and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can actively contribute to the widespread use of large-scale interoperable PHR systems.

Certification programs for eHealth--status quo.

The skills of the workforce are a core factor for the quality of healthcare systems. On top of the basic education, postgraduate training is an important factor for continuously maintaining as well as improving the workforce qualification level. Advanced training often provides certification of the acquired skills. This paper analyses the status quo of international certification programs in the sector of eHealth (EU, US, Global). It uses available literature and observations from international educational expert's workgroups. It identifies gaps regarding certifications in eHealth and suggests steps for solutions. Despite little attention to legal and financial eHealth related content in certification programs in the EU as well as a low degree of harmonization of international certifications in general, there are strong activities especially in the international scope towards personal certification programs in eHealth. Major changes are to be expected within the coming years.

Education for eHealth--a status analysis.

eHealth is not only a growing market, but also an important factor for new healthcare systems. National and European initiatives implicitly demand a higher level of knowledge in the areas of healthcare, engineering and management. As part of the eLearning4eHealth project an initial web based study was performed concentrating on European and global eHealth related educational programs. The results show that eHealth related courses do not evenly exist for the identified professions. 43% of the offered programs are focused on the engineering sector, whereas only 21% are available for the management sector. In order to offer compatible and comparable state of knowledge in the identified fields of profession and knowledge, further educational programs may be necessary. Despite the found shortcomings, results have shown that international activities have started in order to close the gaps and improve the quality of knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of eHealth.