XCO and partners receive 2021 ITEA Award of Excellence for the PARTNER project

We are pleased to announce that XCO has received the 2021 ITEA Award of Excellence for our work on the international R&D&I PARTNER project along with 19 partner companies from across Canada, Belgium, Republic of Korea and the Netherlands.

This award highlights the strength of the PARTNER project and the resulting portfolio of integrated solutions that were developed to improve the patient journey for individuals with chronic diseases.

Improving the patient journey

During a patient’s journey through the health system, their medical information is often stored in multiple databases that focus on specific elements of their care and condition – even within one hospital. These databases generally cannot interact, which makes it impossible to draw up all information belonging to one patient at the click of a button.

Wearables and other compact devices that work with physiological sensors are creating a lot of possibilities to monitor patients when they are not in the hospital. Integrating this information with the hospital’s data could open up an information treasure chest that can stimulate better treatment and lower costs for both patient and hospital.

The PARTNER project has developed an architecture that makes it possible to let different systems, offered by multiple vendors, communicate with each other. The solution includes these self-monitoring solutions for patients.

The system has been demonstrated using a fictitious patient’s journey through cardiac care. The demonstration clearly showed the system’s comprehensiveness: thanks to its architecture based on interoperability standards, it enabled the different partners’ systems to exchange information.

"Workflow has dramatically improved, particularly with the new interface that allows simultaneous work by multiple users. This really frees up time to focus on and interact with patients.” – Dr Nathaniel Hawkins (Vancouver General Hospital).

Strong international collaboration for better care worldwide

Worldwide, over 40 million people suffer from heart failure. A global challenge requires a global solution, so one of PARTNER’s primary achievements has been bringing together partners from three continents. Every contributor involved has released new products and services, ready to be installed in several hospitals for further trials. Thanks to this worldwide collaboration, Barco’s collaborative data platform for healthcare professionals is being further developed for global deployment representing a new business case which will allow them to push further into the health domain. And the successful participation of SME partners dapasoft, CalgaryScientific, iClinic, MedVision, Sopheon and XCO highlighted PARTNER’s role in circumventing dominance by larger companies and the resulting lock-in.

For hospitals, the benefits of PARTNER uptake are twofold. Firstly, for healthcare professionals, it demonstrates that a patient-centric approach with an optimized collaborative care team leads to greater efficiency – up to a 10% improvement compared to traditional workflows – and a knock-on effect of lower healthcare costs. Secondly, improved transparency allows professionals to provide the best services for each individual patient.

‘One patient, one team’

PARTNER’s maxim is ‘one patient, one team’; its central philosophy is driven by dedicated, personalized patient care. When combined with the greater degree of freedom and comfort enabled by smart wearables, this should result in better health outcomes and, above all, a higher quality of life even when ill.

About ITEA

ITEA is the Eureka Cluster for software innovation, enabling a large international community to collaborate in funded projects that turn innovative ideas into new businesses, jobs, economic growth and benefits for society.

PARTNER Project Partners

Belgium:

• Barco N.V.
• Hasselt University
• NXP SemiConductors Belgium NV

Canada:

• Calgary Scientific Inc.
• dapasoft inc
• iClinic Systems Inc.
• XCO Tech Inc.

Republic of Korea:

• Chungbuk National University
• ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research
• eZEX corporation
• Gangnam Severance Hospital
• Neighbor System Co.,Ltd.

The Netherlands:

• Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam
• Eindhoven University of Technology
• Stichting IMEC Nederland
• Koninklijke KPN NV
• MedVision360 BV
• Siemens Healthcare Nederland B.V.
• Sopheon
• ZorgGemak BV