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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. Such 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 is a research oriented Estonian IT company that is focusing mainly on creating data management solutions for health registries, biomedical and statistical studies. The objective of the project 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 pseudonymisation 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.
Summary of project results
The project addressed the collection of personalised health information through targeted research that would meet high data security requirements as its main challenge. To develop such platform, Quretec has established a partnership withthe University of Tartu''s Genebank and the University of Oslo, who contribute with field-based knowledge, drafting and interpreting surveys, building a user-friendly platform and providing input for the creation of the necessary modules. Both project partners contribute input from the point of view of both the end user and the potential customer, which needs and functionalities must be fulfilled so that the data analyst and the end user get the maximum benefit from the platform.
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).
Quretec has achieved its main goals of the project and developed mobile friendly user interface 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 (including Qure Forms). Also, a mobile app MyHealthStudy was 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.
As a result of the project, a configurable, flexible web-based health information collection and feedback application was completed, which can be used with both mobile devices and computers. The application is suitable for conducting various studies, creating specific applications and providing remote services. The solution can be used by biobanks, medical institutions, research institutions, laboratories as well as companies involved in drug development.
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.