Chinese Village Doctors Digital Health Framework

Beijing Social Healthcare Marketing Mobile - Health&Wellness @ Mobile World Congress 2015

This is the link to the video of the presentation made by Beijing Social Healthcare Marketing Mobile in collaboration with Linkcare at the Mobile World Congress 2015

Mrs. Zhiai Liu during the presentation

Cocina contra el Alzheimer

Talleres de cocina para ralentizar el deterioro cognitivo.

La Asociación Ajudam-Predegent, innova en el uso de actividades cotidianas para luchar contra el Alzheimer.

"Tast del record" (cata del recuerdo) es el nombre de la actividad que desde la Asociación vienen promoviendo para ralentizar la pérdida de la memoria.

«Durante seis semanas les inculcamos hábitos saludables de alimentación y les pedimos que nos traigan recetas de su infancia, fotos... Luego las intentan cocinar de memoria», expone Carme Pous, cordinadora de la Asociación Ajudam-Predegent, que impulsa el proyecto junto al Campus de Torribera, el Centro Asistencial Emili Mira y el Ayuntamiento de Santa Coloma. El perfil de los participantes es de 80-85 años, con una vida independiente y un deterioro cognitivo leve.

El Periódico de Catalunya ha publicado recientemente un artículo en el que se menciona la experiencia y explica los resultados que se están obteniendo.

La Asociación Ajudam-Predegent ha colaborado recientemente con Linkcare en la segunda ronda de testeo de la aplicación Happy Walker, probando durante dos meses la aplicación y aportando un feedback que ha resultado muy valioso para mejorarla.

Reunión de cierre de las sesiones de testeo con los
voluntarios de Ajudam-Predegent

El proyecto Happy Walker finalizará a finales de agosto de 2015, una vez se hayan realizado los análisis de viabilidad y programación de mejoras como resultado de las últimas pruebas hechas por los voluntarios.

Catalan Ministry of Health delegation showcases Health Information Systems in Beijing

A delegation of the Catalan Ministry of Health has been invited to participate in the "2015 Chinese medical innovation application development forum" organised by the Chinese Ministry of Health on April 23th and 24th.

In the conference, the Catalan delegation composed by representatives of different health care information system units of the Ministry of Health showcased the "Catalan Shared Health Record" (HC3: Història Clinica Compartida de Catalunya); the citizen "Personal Health Information Website" (LMS: La Meva Salut) and the Adjusted Morbidity Groups (GMA: Groups de Morbiditat Ajustats), an stratification tool that allows government level planning of Health Care demand according to patient's risk stratification.

The meeting have received support from   "悠远水滴网络科技有限公司" (You Yuan Shui Di Network Technology Co., Ltd.), the partner of Linkcare in China who is currently delivering Continued Medical Education to 1.3 milion Chinese Village Doctors in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Health.

Mr. David Monterde (Head of statistics of the Catalan Institut of Health -ICS-, the public health care provider in Catalonia), Dra. Yanjie Gao (Director of Health Statistics and Information Systems of the Chinese Ministry of Health), Oscar Solans (Head of the Catalonian Shared Electronic Health Record at TICSalut) and Jose Manuel Sanchez (Director of Linkcare)

General view of the "2015 Chinese medical innovation application development forum"

Dra. Yanjie Gao during the conference opening ceremony speech

Linkcare's director Jose Manuel Sanchez during the presentation

After confirming the mutual interest for a further collaboration, the Chinese Ministry of Health and the Catalan Ministry of Health have agreed to continue conversations to discuss a potential technological exchange agreement.

Linkcare is an spin of of Barcelona's Clinic Hospital delivering a Clinical Shared Knowledge Platform connection patients, caregivers, practitioners, community primary care centres, specialists, researchers and tertiary hospitals.

Happy Walker project started the second trials

“Happy Walker” (H☺W) is a European Project which aims at developing services on a smart phone to create a better condition of life for the older adults, helping them to maintain an active life style and extend their mobility for as long as possible.

A co-creation process with potential end-users took place in the Netherlands and Spain during 2014. The first trials were carried out with two target groups: people who live independently at home and people with mild cognitive problems that limit their mobility. The objective was to test as many functionalities as possible, to get information for improvements. The results of these trials provided very useful information to enhance the services.

The team of H☺W has been working to create a better version of H☺W and just started the second round of trials on February 2015. With this second and more intensive trial, the H☺W team will collect user’s suggestions to make the first version of the services that could be marketed.


For more information:

Linkcare showcases Chinese Continued Education Program at Mobile World Congress

Linkcare Health Services, in collaboration with You Yuan Shui Di Network Technology Co., Ltd. (悠远水滴网络科技有限公司) presented the "Village Doctors Digital Framework" project during the ECHAlliance's "2nd Health & Wellness" conference of the Barcelona's Mobile World Congress 2015.

Ms. Zhiai Liu, Linkcare's associate in London presenting the 

Village Doctors Digital Health Framework

The Village Doctors Digital Framework project delivers a continued medical education (CME) program to 1.3 million Chinese Village Doctors following an agreement with "China International Exchange and Promotion Association for Medical and Health Care" a unit belonging to the Chinese Ministry of Health.

At the right,  image of the main menu of the Village Doctors Digital Framework. The education program runs over the WeChat mobile social platform.

The continued medical education program includes medical topics review and case studies. By following the training exercise, village doctors earn educational credits to comply with Chinese Government requirements on doctor's continued education.

The app includes information and updates on the Chinese Government's Health Care reform, and a marketplace to obtain information on drugs and medical devices.

Doctors can also use the platform post orders on medical equipment.

The full program includes services to improve health care delivery to village citizens and to improve communication between doctors and citizens though e-vists.

Related links: Linkcare will support 1.3 million Chinese Village Doctors Continued Medical Education

Hospital Clinic and Linkcare on Remote Spirometry in Shanghai

Linkcare and the Pulmonary Function Service of Barcelona's Clinic Hospital and have participated in the 10th International Symposium on Respiratory Diseases (ISRD) & ATS in China Forum 2014 hosted by the Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute(SRRI), Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Zhongshan Hospital; Fudan University's Respiratory Research Institute; the Chinese Circulation Journal and the International Society of Respiratory Diseases.

Dr. Chunxue Bai (Chairman, Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute

Chairman, Department of Pulmonary Medicine

Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University); Dr. Felip Burgos (Barcelona's Clinic Hospital Pulmonary Function Service) and Mr. Jose Manuel Sanchez (Director, Linkcare Health Services)

The speakers presented the Spanish Basc Country experience on remote COPD early diagnose and proposed a similar deploy for Shanghai.

By using the remote spirometry quality control system, respiratory specialist from Zhongshan Hospital will be able to provide technical and clinical support on Nanxiang, Songjian, Fengxian and Zhoupu medical services.

The Linkcare platform allows to prefer remote spirometries suing Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) technology and provide remote quality control of the manoeuvres and clinical evaluation of the exploration findings.

More resources: "Telemedicine Spirometry Training and Quality Assurance Program in Primary Care Centers of a Public Health System” and "Clinical Decision Support System to Enhance Quality Control of Spirometry Using Information and Communication Technologies”

The remote spirometry project has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the project IDENSSA (INNPACTO program grant number IPT-2011-1333-900000)

PROactive partners with Linkcare for COPD active coaching clinical trial

Linkcare will provide PROActive with Telemonitoring Services, Activity Tracking and Electronic Clinical Research Forms (eCRF) to support clinical a trial on COPD activity coaching  

About PROactive

PROactive is a European project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). 

Under this initiative, several partners or stakeholders can be assembled with the common goal of improving care for patients with chronic obstructive lung diseases.

Under the auspices of this European initiative, PROactive is designing a new way to assess the effect of treatments such as medicines, rehabilitation or surgery, with the goal of developing a tool that captures physical activity of COPD patients. 

PROactive Program

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a treatable and preventable lung disease which affects an increasing number of people in Europe. Physical inactivity and its associated symptoms are key features of COPD which contribute to the progression of the disease.

The aim of the 5-year PROactive project (Physical Activity as a Crucial Patient Reported Outcome in COPD) is to develop and validate patient reported outcome (PRO) tools to investigate dimensions of physical activity that are judged as being essential by patients. Currently, the means of measuring the outcomes of physical activity are very generic and do not include the patients\' experiences of how the disease affects their daily lives. The inability of patients with COPD to participate in daily physical activities is an important consequence of COPD, thus representing a daily challenge to patients. Improvement of the ability to participate in physical activity with minimum symptoms is a very important patient-centred target for treatments and other interventions in COPD.

PROactive seeks to address this significant gap, through the development of PRO tools that capture patient daily physical activity in a way that maximally reflect COPD patient experiences in dimensions considered most relevant by the patient. This unique project will be completed in 2014. 

PROactive Consortium

Pharmaceutical companies: Chiesi, GSK - GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Almirall, Novartis, AstraZeneca, UCB, Boheringer Ingelheim.
Academic Institutions: KU Leuven - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Netherlands), The University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Thorax – Research Center of Intensive & Emergency Thoracic Medicine (Greece), Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust (United Kingdom), CREAL - Centre de Recerca en Epidemiologia Ambiental (Catalonia), Universität Zurich (Switzerland), University Medical Center Groningen (Denmark).
Patient Organisations: Astma Fonds Longstichting (Netherlands),  British Lung Foundation (United Kingdom), ERS - European Respiratory Society (Switzerland)
Small and Medium Enterprise: Choice Healthcare Solutions (United Kingdom)

The IMI partnership

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a unique public-private partnership between the pharmaceutical industry represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and the European Communities represented by the European Commission. The aim of IMI is to support the faster discovery and development of better medicines for patients and to enhance Europe's competitiveness by ensuring that its biopharmaceutical sector remains a dynamic high-technology sector.

Barcelona Digital, Linkcare and the Hospital Clínic promote the Barcelona Virtual Health Practice

Barcelona Virtual Health Practice is a long-term strategically partnership to become the health and care model for chronic patients from technology transfer applied to the health care and clinical practice

Both organisations, aimed to improve the efficiency of the health services through the use of digital technologies, are working in jointly projects of technological innovation and applied research, such as Synergy-COPD or Idenssa-TIC.

Barcelona Virtual Health Practice (BVHP) is the strategic partnership signed by the president of Barcelona Digital, Antoni Massanell, and the managing director of the Hospital Clínic, Dr. Josep Maria Piqué.

This long-term strategic initiative created with the aim of technology transfer in health care and clinical practice and to become reference at the international level in health technology. It is aimed to transform the model of health and care for chronic patients on the basis of the improvement in the provision of health services and make them more efficient through the use of digital technologies in the treatment of a chronic patient. 

The main aim is to increase the contact between health care providers and patients, improve the diagnostic quality and sustainability and reduce physical visits.

The partnership will be fixed with the joint participation of Barcelona Digital, Linkcare and Hospital Clínic in R&D programs and the development and implementation of innovative projects that generate new business models for both institutions and new partners that participate in the future.

Regarding research programs, the benchmarking technology centre in ICT and Hospital Clínic will coordinate to take advantage of funding opportunities arising from the Horizon 2020 new European program. They participate together, as partners, in proposals and subsequent execution projects - in case of procurement- according with the objectives of the BVHP.

Creation of future agreements and investor input
Both organizations seek alliances and agreements with companies and incorporate the necessary investment partners that will ensure the economic viability and the development of various projects and programmes.

The BVHP will keep in mind the needs and points of view of the different stakeholders involved in the health care process, with the aim of influencing in the medical practice.

The Barcelona Virtual Health Practice project has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the project IDENSSA (INNPACTO program grant number IPT-2011-1333-900000)

Linkcare platform will be used by the Urban Training Project

The Urban Training clinical trial project plans on a training intervention by using public spaces and urban walkable trails, adapted to each patient needs and capabilities. Primary objective is to assess 12 months effectiveness of the intervention with respect to: (primary outcome): physical activity level, and (secondary outcomes): COPD admissions, exercise capacity, body composition, quality of life, and mental health.

The trial is designed and sponsored by Judith Garcia-Aymerich, director of CREAL.

Participants include:

Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria, Madrid

Sociedad Española de Neumología (SEPAR), Barcelona

FCS Blanquerna, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona

Hospital Clinic of Barcelona

Hospital del Mar, Barcelona

Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, Badalona

IDIAP Jordi Gol, Barcelona

Hospital de Mataró, Mataró

Hospital de Viladecans, Viladecans

Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona

Linkcare will provide Activity Tracking and eCRF data management to PROactive

The aim of PROactive is to develop new tools that will enable patients, their doctors and clinical researchers to accurately assess the improvement or deterioration of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). 

COPD is a treatable and preventable disease of the lungs which affects an increasing number of Europeans. Patients usually experience a progressive decline in their condition, they may get easily short of breath, experience leg fatigue and are often forced to reduce their physical activity and their normal way of life.

There are currently no valid tests that measure the impact of the disease on physical activity levels and related dimensions (e.g. the symptoms experienced during physical activity). Hence, accurate mapping of the progression or improvement of the disease in this important patient related domain is difficult. The commonly used lung function tests for COPD provide only limited information on the progression of the disease and on the symptoms and quality of life experienced by patients. Exercise tests, on the other hand are more an assessment of the capacity of the patient, rather than of the problems of patients in daily life.

The PROactive consortium will use Linkcare's Patient Reported Outcome-tools that detect small, but clinically relevant changes in physical activity and its related symptoms and as such, it will offer results more relevant to patients and doctors. A user friendly electronic tool will help patients to assess on a day-to-day basis the activities in which they engage and the symptoms associated to these activities. The second tool will be used during hospital visits to assess the patients' physical activity and experience of the disease. To verify the usefulness of the tools, they will be tested in clinical trials with more than 600 COPD patients.  The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the American Food and Drug Administration will be closely involved in the developments.

The Linkcare tool will give doctors, nurses and other health care providers unique information on the effect of treatment on their patients in a domain of immediate relevance to their patients. Furthermore, the tests will be useful to test the effect of new COPD treatments in clinical trials. The PROactive project also includes the dissemination of the new tools and the training of scientists and hospital staff that will use the tools. The PROactive scientists believe that their work will pave the way for similar tools in other chronic diseases, such as congestive heart failure.

Linkcare will support 1.3 million Chinese Village Doctors continued medical education

Linkcare and 360med.so had agreed to collaborate together to deploy a mobile learning platform to support the China's Medical Doctor Association project of continued education. The learning platform, based on WeChat social network, will be of mandatory use for continuous professional education of 1,370,000 rural doctors around the country, serving a total population of 780 million citizens.

The project has been set up to sustain the legislation ruled on March 2013 by the Ministry of Health of China to improve China’s Rural Health care system. Once fully deployed, the continuous education program will become the world's largest one of its kind ever.

360med.so

Founded in Beijing in 2010 by young entrepreneurs Zi Jun, health marketing specialist, and Wang Wei, medicine graduate, 360med has quickly become China's leading company in digital health communication. Their Weibo page has 1 million followers, most of them doctors, and their customers include most of the transnational pharmaceutical companies doing business in China.

Linkcare Health Services

Founded in 2010 as a spin off of Barcelona’s Clinic Hospital, Linkcare is specialised in Clinical Knowledge Sharing and Integrated Care for Health Care Professionals. The company was promoted by pulmonologist Dr. Josep Roca with his team: Albert Alonso, Carme Hernandez and Felip Burgos, to bring to market the international research made during the past decade by IDIBAPS. In 2012 the start up received an investment from Tanaka Consulting. Right now the company is closing its first financing round under the leadership of it’s president Jose Sanchez and it’s CEO Dr. Jim Roldan, an entrepreneur and business angel specialised in international high tech venture development.

The village doctors project has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the project IDENSSA (INNPACTO program grant number IPT-2011-1333-900000)

Active Aging Innovation in Catalonia

In the context of the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Forum 2013, the Catalan Department of Health was invited to Norrkoping (Sweden) to share best practices on driving innovation in active and healthy aging in Catalonia and Europe. 

On September 24, the session took place in a dynamic format to 'talk show', led by a British BBC journalist, with the participation of other European regions leaders in this field, including Catalonia. Dr. Francisco Garcia Cuyàs, ICT Coordinator, Department of Health and Director of the Fundació TicSalut, made ​​the presentation of the Catalan experience.

Linkcare Health Services is an active partner in several AAL founded projects such as Fearless and Happy Walker

Francesc Garcia Cuyàs AAL Forum Innovation in Catalonia from Fundació TicSalut on Vimeo.

Linkcare Telemedicine improves Multiple Sclerosis remote followup

The Multiple Sclerosis Unit of the Department of Neurology at Hospital Clínic (Barcelona, Spain) presents the partial results of a treatment study of patients with MS using telemedicine, at the European Congress of Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) 2013 in Copenhagen.

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) require an accurate clinical follow-up due to the unpredictable course of the disease and the need to monitor the efficacy of available therapies. One of the main objectives is to detect the progression of the disease as soon as possible. Telemedicine has proven to be a useful tool in the control and monitoring of chronic diseases, and its specific use for MS in combination with accelerometers for objective assessment of ambulation is very promising.

The study was accomplished by creating two groups of patients, these being treated only in one of groups to compare results .

Activities performed by the pressential assessment group:

• Expanded Disability Status Scale and functional systems
• Test 6 - MWT (6 Minute Walk Test) and conventional triaxial accelerometers (counts/steps)

Activities performed by the telemedicine assessment group:

• Self-administered questionnaires on neurological functions + a neurological examination video
• Remote 6 - MWT with accelerometer (counts/steps)
• One week activity registration with accelerometer (counts/steps)

All the Telemedicine part has been carried out using Linkcare platform and has confirmed the feasibility of using telemedicine to evaluate MS patients by combining self-reported and multimedia information, which had not been previously described. The information obtained through the remote 6 - MWT with accelerometers proved to be useful to reflect daily walking activity of patients. The combination of the use of Telemedicine and accelerometers produced valuable information to better characterize the disease and help in the detection of changes due to medical interventions or to the advancement of the disease itself.

Linkcare plans to extend Integrated Care Telemedicine to China

Linkcare's directors Mr. Jose Sanchez and Dr. Jim Roldan met Mr. Yuexin Chen, CEO of Dohoo Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd. to discuss a possible collaboration to extended Integrated Care Telemedicine in the Chinese province of Hunan. Dr. Joan Escarrabill, head of the chronic program at Hospital Clinic joined the team to share Clinic's expertise on Integrated Care