Save money – save lives

Project type: Creative Path to Practical Knowledge (PKP) – academic year 2016/17

Project title: Save money – save lives

Project team:

• Students: Urša Čopi, Eva Ilovar, Nina Konvalinka, Žiga Metelko, Betim Nuredini, and Tjaša Perger
• Main educational mentor and coordinator: Prof. Dr. Grega Strban
• Work mentors: Aleksandra Memom (NEXUM d.o.o.) and Alenka Oven (Institute for Long-Term Care)
• Other educational mentor: Asst. Dr. Mirjam Ravljen (Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ljubljana)

Financers:

Due to increasingly stressful and unhealthy lifestyles, the number of cardiovascular patients has been growing year on year in recent years. It is therefore not surprising that society faces the challenge of finding solutions to make patients' lives easier, shorten waiting lists, and, at the same time, enable everyone to age as healthily as possible. Excessive weight is a major risk factor for the development of disease. By 2030, there is expected to be a 20% increase in deaths from cardiovascular disease, which will also increase healthcare costs if we do not take timely action. Preventive planning and early detection of risk factors are therefore necessary. Technological development can be our strongest ally in maintaining cost-effective and high-quality health and social care, as it encourages people of all ages to take better care of their health and thus improve their quality of life. The project partner (Nexum) specialises in the sale of power electronics in South-Eastern Europe. The main idea of the project is to market an electronic device and software package that, through a web and mobile application, enables extremely accurate, mobile, and rapid medical diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. In the future, telemedicine (e-health) will enable fast, highly accurate, and easy detection of cardiac arrhythmia in the home environment and the remote transfer of such information between doctors and patients. The diagnostic system can automatically detect the five most common arrhythmia types, covering 95% of cardiac arrhythmias with more than 94% accuracy. The future commercial product would enable patients to record and transmit ECGs to their doctors from their home environment, allowing healthcare professionals to remotely determine a diagnosis directly via a mobile device.

The project will comprehensively address the legal relationship between the patient and the doctor and the legal relationship between the patient and the insurance provider (personal data protection when transferring information via applications, right to the device - compulsory health insurance or self-pay), financial analysis of the product (economic and social) and preparation of a business model, possible advantages and disadvantages of transferring information via online applications, and possible advantages and disadvantages of introducing the device to patients (shortening waiting lists, reducing public expenditure).

Save money – save lives