CARE-PATHS

CARE-PATHS addresses key implementation barriers to the methodology of Clinical Pathways. The project leans upon the concept of Clinical Pathways. A clinical pathway is a plan of care that is applied to patients with a known diagnosis and a predictable clinical outcome.

The implementation of Clinical Pathways is impeded for a series of reasons:

• Defining Clinical Pathways requires a great deal of skill for finding and analyzing the "highest quality available evidence".
• Clinical pathways must be brought up to date regularly. Even the best clinical pathways do not contain all the answers that will be needed. It is therefore necessary to maintain the care giver's knowledge up to date to be able to respond to any of the unanswered situations in a reasonable time.
• Indicators must be set up to allow an analysis of how closely the pathway is being followed, of its results, of deviations. Once the results and deviations have been analyzed, and the latest scientific data has been studied, the clinical pathway should be modified and brought up to date.
• Implementing clinical pathways might also face cultural and/or organizational challenges, such as resistance from doctors, lack of group work, and lack of interdisciplinary collaboration.

The approach adopted by CARE-PATHS is to exploit emerging technologies in knowledge management and semantic web for enabling the methodology of "Clinical Pathways" to function, to be effective and to succeed.

For further information, please visit:
http://www.carepaths.eupm.net

Project co-ordinator:
AIRIAL Conseil

Partners:

• Airial Conseil (FR)
• AGENZIA SANITARIA REGIONALE EMILIAROMAGNA (IT)
• INSTITUTO DE APLICACIONES DE LAS TECNOLOGIAS DE LA INFORMACION Y DE LAS COMUNICACIONES AVANZADAS - ASOCIACION ITACA (ES)
• Hitech SNT (GR)
• GL2006 Europe (UK)
• Patmos (IT)
• AZIENDA OSPEDALIERA DI PARMA (IT)
• FUNDACION PARA LA INVESTIGACION DEL HOSPITAL UNIVERSITARIO LA FE (ES)

Timetable: from 06/04 – to 11/06

Total cost: € 3.776.000

EC funding: € 2.200.000

Instrument: STREP

Project Identifier: IST-2002-507017

Source: FP6 eHealth Portfolio of Projects