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Description
The global health sector is rapidly developing in personalised medicine. Personalised medicine is set to transform the ICT-health service and vice versa – ICT solutions allow varied information sources to be monitored or combined in ways that provide quicker, safer, and more personalised approach. In the field of personalised medicine, prevention, diagnostics, treatment, and follow-up are adapted to the biological characteristics of the individual. Through the strategy, Quretec aims to build firm foundations for the future of the public health service. The primary healthcare service should be involved in this development. The strategy will contribute to consistent, high-quality services. The digital health market is moving towards technology enablers (networks, devices, platforms, software, equipment) and health solutions (products, services, content, applications).
Quretec’s objective is to develop a mobile friendly app My Health Study for data collection and feedback of personalised health information under high security requirements based on biobank or study participants. For the pseudonymization of the participants, separate authentication server will be developed. The personal identification information will be separated from the health information with different physical locations and cryptographic methods. The app will be built on the core functionalities of Quretec’s current platform (Qure Platform). By the end of the project, the project consortium will have developed a portal that can be used for collection of valuable health-related data which will be used for research purposes and to motivate the users to improve their health habits and lifestyle. The portal will be in the form of a desktop version for the analysts and in the form of a mobile app for patients taking into consideration the convenience of using the platform.
Summary of project results
No major challenges.
The project aimed to develop a mobile friendly app My Health Study for data collection and feedback of personalised health information under high security requirements based on biobank or study participants. The app will be built on the core functionalities of Quretec’s current platform (Qure Platform).
Project has achieved its main goals, as a result a mobile friendly user interface has been developed to its core product Qure Platform. It is already in active use among most of Quretec’s customers who have migrated to Qure Platform version 6. In addition, a mobile app MyHealthStudy has been developed that uses Qure Forms in the background, and can be used for multiple purposes, for data collection in health surveys, or for flexible prototyping any new ideas, our customers would want to develop. It will open us new possibilities we did not have before the project. We developed new audit log and action history chaining methods that ads trust to our software integrity that is sometimes required in specific projects.
One of the greatest achievements of the project was the considerable (ca 20-fold) scale-up of the Quretec questionnaire platform, allowing thousands of biobank participants to log into the platform and fill in questionnaires simultaneously. This capacity has already been applied in two more data collection projects with over 70,000 respondents each and will definitely attract more grant and private sector funding for further research projects and public-private partnerships.
Several communication activities were carried out to introduce the completed solution to its users, also several articles were published in the Estonian media. A total of 24 jobs were created within the project.
Summary of bilateral results
In parallel with the final design of the application, validation and testing took place in Estonia and Norway. The My Health Study approach was adjusted and tested at the University of Oslo, by scientists and clinicians with extensive experience working with mental health disorders and large clinical cohorts. User feedback was collected for further development purposes and implemented under the corresponding development tasks. Testing was carried out by NORMENT Centre Test User group and Norwegian Bipolar Association. These tasks gave valuable insight into how to adjust and harmonize technical framework at institutions in two countries with different infrastructure and data security regulations.