Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: Who will be the owner / provider / maintainer of the service?

The owner of the service will be the participating Social and Health Authorities. Depending on local strategy, the provision of services can be outsourced to private service providers. In any event the ultimate responsibility for the provision of services, their maintenance and enhancement will stay with the Social and Health Authorities.

Q2: Who will be the actual users of the service?

The actual users of the services can be broken down into different categories:

• Elderly people: They are the main users and beneficiaries of the services and they will use directly the medical devices and the videoconferencing service.
• Caregivers: Formal and informal caregivers play a major role in looking after elderly people. They will keep such an important role in the context of DREAMING by helping elderly people to take measurements when their manual skills and/or intellectual faculties will decline. They will also have access to the Decision Support System but this will be limited to information which is relevant for the type of assistance that they give to the elderly people. They will be warned of situation of risk according to the intervention protocols agreed for each type of risk.
• Contact Centre operators: They will have access to the Decision Support System for monitoring and elderly assistance purposes.
• Social Workers: They will be activated if and when there is a need for their intervention. They will use mainly the videoconferencing service to keep in touch with the elderly people they look after when they cannot assist them in person. They will also have access to the Decision Support System but this will be limited to information which is relevant for their work (access to clinical data will not be allowed, in principle).
• General Practitioners and Community Nurses: They represent the front line of the healthcare ICT-PSP/2007/1 Pilot Type B proposal 29/05/07 v1 DREAMING Proposal Part B: page 5 of 108 system and they have the primary mission to look after elderly people when they live in their homes. They will be given access to the Decision Support System with different access grants depending on which of the two categories they belong to. They will be automatically notified by the Decision Support System or by the Contact Centre operators when their intervention is required. They will also have access to videoconferencing service to keep in touch with their patients.
• Emergency services: They will be automatically notified by the Decision Support System or by the Contact Centre operators when the situation detected by the Monitoring and Alarm Handling service requires immediate action (fire, gas leak, fall, life threatening health conditions, etc.).
• Medical Specialists: Depending on the local healthcare organisation, some chronic diseases can be monitored directly by the Secondary Care Medical Specialist. They will be given access to the Decision Support System for a periodic check of the disease evolution and they can be notified by the Decision Support System of any condition which is considered anomalous.

Q3: How will it be used (describe the typical usage case from users point of view)?

The elderly person will be asked to follow a routine of measurements with self-activated medical devices. The specific type of devices and the frequency of the measurement depend on the type of disease they suffer from and on the seriousness of their condition. Videoconferencing will be accessible through the remote IR control and will allow to select the person to talk to from a list of people belonging to their community of correspondents.

Q4: How will the service be sustained? Who will pay the cost? (e.g. end-user / public authority /mixed model etc.)

The cost of the service will be paid by Public Authorities in all the countries with a public health and social service system. In countries with an insurance based system, the service will be paid for by the health insurance or by private insurances subscribed by individuals.

Q5:Does the service need specific content? If yes, how is it provided, who provides it?

The service does not require specific content apart from the rules that define situations of risk or alarms for the Decision Support System. These rules will be defined by multi-disciplinary teams composed by physicians (General Practitioners, gerontologists, neurologists, etc.) and social service professionals working for the participating public authorities.