Health-e-Child online information platform
Accumulated knowledge for better pediatric care
The team at Siemens Medical Solutions has established the Health-e-Child online pediatric information platform to help make pediatric insights and research results available to doctors, clinics and research institutions worldwide.
Although diseases often develop much differently in children than in adults and thus require a different approach to treatment, pediatrics has traditionally been neglected in research and made rather slow progress. The reason is the relative rarity of many diseases in children, leading to a low incentive for investment. Moreover, there has been a lack of widespread access to the latest research results. Such access is imperative, since complex diseases can not be adequately researched by one single hospital or even one single discipline alone.
Professors Giacomo Pongiglione (left) and Alberto Martini of Genoa have declared war on rheumatism.
Siemens Medical Solutions, thanks to its position as a leader in medical diagnostic and information technologies, has access to the technologies needed to remedy this situation. This inspired a team of employees at the Med facility in Erlangen, Germany, to establish a pan-European information platform where hospitals, research institutes and companies can share their diagnostic, treatment and biomedical insights. The team hopes this will improve the medical care children receive, especially for rare diseases.
The dedicated Med team already celebrated its initial success when it oversaw installation of the information platform it created in several participating hospitals, universities and medical institutions in Europe, giving interdisciplinary teams of technical and clinical personnel the opportunity to work together closely. Cooperation is concentrated initially on research into brain tumors, arthritis and heart disease – areas that have not yet been adequately documented in pediatrics.
Another focus of Health-e-Child is interdisciplinary training of doctors, even beyond the scope of those involved in the project. A course on the genetics of infectious diseases in children has already been held in Bologna, Italy.
The project team plans to expand the information platform to a global network that also includes hospitals in remote areas. Support was provided by the European Union’s Sixth Framework Program for Research and Technological Development.