Personal Health Systems development scenarios up to 2030 were discussed at the Foresight Workshop in Manchester
The PHS Foresight scenarios workshop was held in Manchester, Great Britain, on June 13 and 14, 2013, as a part of the FP7 project ‘Personal Health Systems (PHS) Foresight’. The Higher School of Economics was represented by the researchers of Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge, Oleg Ena and Irina Efimenko (Center for Information Intelligence Applications and Systems, CIAS).
The project ‘Personal Health Systems Foresight’ was initiated in September, 2012, under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7). It is a support action, which coordinates strategic stakeholder engagements in the realm of Personal Health Systems (PHS) within and beyond European Union up to 2030. The project expands across different PHS areas of application such as chronic disease management, life-style management, independent living and emergency services. PHS assist in the provision of continuous, quality controlled and personalized health services to empowered individuals regardless of location. PHS provides a horizontal development area across variety of patients, clinical specialties, technology fields and health services. The project consortium includes Austrian Institute of Technology, Spanish IT-company Impetu Solutions, and the University of Manchester. A site of the project was launched to support public debates. Expert discussions are supported through a series of workshops.
The Workshop considered alternative scenarios for PHS development. More than 20 participants represented leading institutions and clinical centers of Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Russia.
Topics discussed within a series of working sessions included PHS infrastructure and personnel policy which implied a need for training specialists in multidisciplinary domain at the meeting point of medicine and IT. CIAS/ISSEK specialists considered problems of development of new analytical tools for PHS, models of medical knowledge formalization and transfer, infrastructural hubs for accumulation of this knowledge.
Several sessions were assigned to PHS in the context of various health conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and pregnancy. Experts concluded that the detailed formal models covering a broad variety of parameters for a patient and a disease were necessary. Such models could provide a basis for R&D resulting in implementation of effective PHS applications.
Prepared by Irina Efimenko