Computational Medicine Laboratory and Technology

In the past several years the Laboratory has focused its R&D activities on addressing the R&D challenges involved in the design of the architecture for the future integrated regional health information networks and the seamless delivery of integrated, novel eHealth services.
To achieve this goal, complex problems and issues related to data heterogeneity, heterogeneity of platform and service requirements, complex protection and authorization policies, and interoperability protocols and standards for information exchange had to be addressed. Strategically important therefore becomes the issue of developing an open, scalable and evolvable Healthcare Information Infrastructure (HII). The HII must primarily provide the framework for the effective integration of distributed and heterogeneous components, ensuring overall integrity in terms of functional and information interworking, while advances in network technology should enhance and extend applications, rather than replacing them or making them obsolete.
Important objectives in any effort toward establishing regional health information networks are the following:

• adoption of a common reference Healthcare Information Infrastructure (HII) and clinically significant ehealth services at a regional level
• definition of medical and operational procedures for sharing resources and expertise over such trans-regional healthcare networks, so that patient mobility and improved care practices can be supported effectively
• development of environments for information exchange among regional healthcare networks, based on agreed information exchange protocols for the medical domain
• promotion of a harmonized development of regional healthcare networks

The Laboratory has invested significant R&D efforts towards the design, development, deployment and support of HYGEIAnet, the Regional Health Information Network of Crete and the required Healthcare Information Infrastructure (HII), as a model for the development of such networks. The innovative and integrated technological solutions developed by the Computational Medicine Laboratory received the eHealth 2003 award at the eHealth 2003 Ministerial Conference and Exhibition.

• In the course of its activities the Laboratory has developed a family of innovative products (the Integrated Care Solutions - ICS) which are today in the process of commercialization and exploitation through our participation in a number of National competitive tenders for the development of Regional Health Information Networks for the Health and Social Care authorities in Greece

A short presentation of the family of products and technologies developed by the BMI Lab can be found in the following pdf file (in Greek). A more detailed presentation of the various products and service platforms can be found below:

• eHealth
  A collaboration environment allowing health professionals to remotely offer/receive consultation. Health professionals create episode folders and upload or create standardized content in them. They can share this content asynchronously, or "meet" in the episode and use chat and videoconference for real-time communication
  
  
• HII
  COAS  - Clinical Observations Access Service
  HRS    - Health Resource Service
  PIDS   - Person Identification Service
  I-EHR IS  - Integrated Electronic Health Record Indexing Service
  TS      - Terminology Service
  
  
• IASO
  The pilot system currently used by EKAB Crete consists of a number of applications providing services to the staff of EKAB and other cooperating healthcare service providers. A short presentation of this pilot system can be found in the following pdf file (in Greek)
  
  
• ICS
  An application framework for the development of clinical information systems to be used in hospitals, Primary Care Centers and other smaller healthcare-providing units. The ICS Application Framework consists of a workbench for doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, together with a set of generic windows and functions
  
  
• ICS-App
  ICS Appointments was designed to meet the unique challenges of both inpatient and outpatient scheduling. ICS Appointments can manage complex appointment scheduling activities in an intuitive appointment visual web interface. As an enterprise scheduling and access management tool, ICS Appointments allows you to improve organizational efficiency while maximizing revenue
  
  
• I-EHR
  An IT Service for professionals or citizens who need a uniform way to access parts of patient record data that are physically located in different clinical information systems. Provides fast, secure and authorized access to distributed patient record information from multiple disparate sources
  
  
• PHCCIS
  The Primary Health Care Center Information System (PHCCIS) implements a generic and broad-spectrum patient record to be used by General Practitioners. The principle functionality of the system is the electronic storage and management of patient data that are produced during the communication about the patient between two or more (health care) individuals