Six cutting-edge projects are in the running for the prestigious €10,000
European Health Award 2014, sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Health and FOPI, which brings together Austria's research-based pharmaceutical
and biotechnology companies. The winner will be chosen by a panel of leading
health experts, and announced during the 17th EHFG Conference, being held in
the Gastein Valley.
The European Health Award honours projects and initiatives aiming to
improve public health or health care in Europe. Important criteria are that
more than one European country should be involved in the project, it should
show innovation and be sustainable, and that the results are transferable to
other states and address a significant health threat that directly benefits a
substantial portion of the population or relatively large patient groups.
"The point of this award is to promote intelligent and effective
initiatives and encourage the development of projects that lend themselves to
effective trans-national cooperation," Prof Helmut Brand, President of the
International Forum Gastein, said. "At this year's EHFG we will be discussing
how we can meet visions of a social and prosperous Europe, and the fact that we
need politicians and stakeholders who will champion smart, sustainable and
inclusive policies. The European Health Award contributes to this theme by
rewarding and highlighting projects that are sustainable, innovative,
multi-country and breaking new boundaries in their attempts to improve health
in Europe.” The European Health Award, together with the European Health Forum
Gastein, is aimed at encouraging such an approach. "In healthcare there is
always a risk of making short-sighted cuts instead of managing overlaps and
inefficiency. The shortlisted projects have identified problems of healthcare
delivery or significant threats to population health, and are directly
addressing issues such as efficiency, quality of care and access to care that
are so important to ensure our health systems are innovative" explained
Professor Brand.
The European Health Award was established in 2007 by Honorary President and
EHFG founder Professor Günther Leiner. Leiner stressed that promoting
transborder cooperation in health policy had been a key motivating factor
behind establishing the award and seven years later the challenge has become
even greater: "Today's health challenges are compounded by factors such as
demographic developments increasing the demand for health, the growing
prevalence of chronic conditions and by increasing costs and scarcity of
resources. Promoting a cross-border agenda in health policy, multi-country
working and the development of transferable initiatives remains as important as
ever," Prof Leiner said.
Last year's award went to the Recreational Drugs European Network (ReDNet)
Project, a multicentred project based in eight EU countries and aimed at
identifying new psychoactive substances sold online and improving the
information stream to vulnerable individuals, especially young people and
professionals working with them, via a range of innovative technological tools.
In 2012 the Award winner was HLS-EU - the European Health Literacy Project,
that organised the multi-country European Health Literacy Survey, founded the
international network 'Health Literacy Europe' and established national
advisory boards on health literacy in eight countries to address the overall
cultural, social and political impact of health literacy.
The 2014 short-list in detail
1. ITAREPS (Information Technology Aided Relapse
Prevention Programme in Schizophrenia)
https://www.itareps.com
https://www.itareps.com
The ITAREPS system (Information Technology Aided Relapse Prevention
Programme in Schizophrenia) represents a mobile phone-based e-Health solution
for weekly remote patient monitoring and disease management in schizophrenia
and psychotic disorders in general. ITAREPS provides health professionals with
home telemonitoring via a PC-to-phone SMS platform that identifies prodromal
symptoms of relapse, to enable early intervention and prevent hospitalisations.
The participants of the programme are patients and their family members. The
programme was developed by the Prague Psychiatric Centre in 2005. Based on
available evidence, ITAREPS is capable of reducing the risk of
rehospitalisation down to one-fifth.
Participating countries: Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Japan.
2. SALUS (Scalable, Standard based
Interoperability Framework for Sustainable Pro-active Post Market Safety
Studies)
http://www.salusproject.eu
http://www.salusproject.eu
The main aim of SALUS is to complement on-going medical drug safety studies
through a scalable and standard based interoperability framework which
specially focuses on postmarketingpharmacovigilance activities. Post-marketing
pharmacovigilance can be defined as the science of detecting, assessing,
understanding, and preventing adverse effects of drugs or other drug related
problems once the drug is on market. The SALUS project fosters the integration
of clinical care information from electronic health records (EHRs) into
clinical research systems to enable proactive post-marketing safety studies for
early detection of potential safety issues.
Participating countries: Italy and Germany and partners from Switzerland,
France, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands and Turkey.
ExplainTB is a crowd charity project that offers free educational videos in
several languages at the point of care: more than 300 volunteers worldwide
contributed content, translations, proof-readings, voice-overs or acted as
doctors in the films. The app allows the display of movies and written
information in about 28 languages. The audio-visual content also teaches
populations that are out of reach for print material. ExplainTB helps the
healthcare worker to overcome the language barrier, allows patients to learn
about their disease in their mother tongue and provides relatives with
essential information about prevention of transmission. Furthermore, ExplainTB
allows governments to publish national guidelines and country-specific
information on a mobile point-of-care platform. Access to all videos can be
gained via an app or by scanning a QR code from a poster. The posters are
available on www.explaintb.org. The website allows the creation of bi-lingual
handouts with individually tailored written information. Available since
November 2013, ExplainTB has registered access to its website from over 80
countries. More than 2500 regular users access the information.
Participating countries: Not applicable, videos in 16 languages, written
material in 33 languages, 12000 visitors registered from over 80 countries.
The EpiSouth-plus Project aimed at increasing health security in the
Mediterranean Area and Balkans by enhancing preparedness to threats, which can
affect health security, and to bio-security risks at national/regional levels
in the framework of International Health Regulation implementation. Building upon
the Network of 27 EU and non-EU Countries established by the previous project
EpiSouth (2006-2010), the whole initiative has lasted more than seven years
(2006-2014). The EpiSouth plus project has strengthened countries' capacity to
cope with health threats through concerted and coordinated capacity building
activities, including the establishment of a Mediterranean Regional
Laboratories network; promotion of common procedures in interoperable Generic
Preparedness and Risk management among the countries involved in the Network;
enhancement of Mediterranean Early Warning Systems (EWS) allowing alerts and
Epidemic Intelligence (EI) information sharing among EpiSouth countries and
developing interoperability with other Early Warning Systems, including the European
EWRS. Besides several trainings and workshops for epidemiologists and lab
staff, among the main outcomes of the project have been guidelines for the
establishment of lab networks and a tool for the development or the upgrading
of National Generic Emergency Preparedness Plans (EPREP).
Participating countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus,Croatia, France, Greece, Italy,
Malta, Romania, Slovenia, Spain plus 17 non-EU MS of the Mediterranean Area and
South-East Europe (Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, FYROM,
Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Montenegro, Palestine, Serbia,
Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey).
The Euro-Peristat project's aim is to develop a high quality, innovative,
internationally recognized and sustainable European perinatal health
information system, producing data and analysis on a regular basis for use by
stakeholders including clinicians (obstetricians, neonatologists, midwives, and
neonatal nurses), policy makers in health ministries, maternal and child
protection offices, and insurance and quality assurance agencies as well as
pregnant women and their families. The project began as part of the EU's Health
Monitoring Programme and relies on an active network of European perinatal
health professionals (clinicians, epidemiologists, and statisticians).
Euro-Peristat's data serve as evidence for key stakeholders making decisions
about mothers and babies´ health in Europe. Each of their reports has been
downloaded over 3000 times and in a web evaluation of 100 high-level
stakeholders, 80% of respondents rated their publications very useful for their
work. Over 200 news articles have been published on their results which have generated
multiple debates about care provision to mothers and children.
Participating countries: Twenty-nine countries currently participate in
Euro-Peristat, including the 26 EU member states and Iceland, Norway, and
Switzerland.
Electrical heart disease leading to arrhythmias represents a major public
health issue because it increases the risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD).
Current SCD prevention strategies are not directed at the underlying risk
mechanisms. The EUTrigTreat project elucidates molecular and environmental
mechanisms, which underlie life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, and how genes
and external factors modulate and initiate catastrophic electrical
abnormalities in the heart. Improved understanding of key arrhythmia mechanisms
enables EUTrigTreat investigators to develop mechanism-targeted diagnostic and
therapeutic approaches including novel drug and device therapies. These
important objectives are investigated by a multidisciplinary research team
including clinical and basic scientists together with small-to-medium
enterprises, and through a coordinated large-scale collaborative excellence
project.
Participating countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The
Netherlands, Switzerland, U.K. and USA