Aim

The open telecare initiative aims at developing open telecare, by following an open source and open standards approach to client centered care. It provides a platform for exchange of ideas, views, knowledge and experience, and helps in forming networks of people and organizations who wish to contribute to the innovation of health care using technology. With its focus on client centered care, such innovation can contribute to quality of life of patients or clients and their informal carers, quality and productivity of professional care provision and cost containment.


For whom

Participants in this initiative include: clients, patients, informal carers and their organizations, public health authorities, manufacturers of telecare equipment, health care institutes, service providers, researchers, developers. Help and support of any kind that contribute to the development of open telecare is welcome.


Open source and open standards in telecare: why?

The open telecare initiative is based on a vision that the Western health care system is shifting towards client centered care. At the same time technological developments increasingly offer options for providing medical help at home that used to be available in institutes only. Appropriate applications of technology enhance options for clients and carers and can facilitate client centered care.

Exchange of information is a key process in health care. Medical information is traditionally generated at the working location of the health care professional; this information is mainly exchanged with other professionals.

With the advent of telecare, medical information is generated more and more in the home environment of the client. Here, the information may be shared with both professionals and informal carers.

There are technological tools available that support this process of information exchange. However, where they employ proprietary standards and protocols they do not encourage this shift towards client centered care. They limit interoperability of telecare systems of different manufacturers. They reduce a freedom of choice for the client and create dependence on individual suppliers and providers. Because decision makers hesitate to take the risks of becoming dependent on a supplier of a telecare solution, development of telecare towards mainstream medicine is slow.

An open source and open standards approach aims at independence from individual suppliers and service providers and enriches choice for care providers and clients. It accelerates the development of telecare as a part of routine care, and is instrumental to the development of client centered care.

How does the initiative work?

The open telecare initiative offers the opportunity to more easily find other organizations and individuals who wish to collaborate sharing this vision. Through the sharing of information, ideas, opinions, knowledge and experience the participants can learn from each other. Sharing thoughts and ideas can lead to agreement and consensus that is needed for widely accepted telecare solutions. The initiative helps in forming multi-disciplinary collaborative networks that are needed in realizing this vision through project activities.

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