Page 10 - Medical Informatics

Patients with early signs of COVID-19 disease should be treated as soon as possible. By means of home
telemonitoring, it’s possible to guarantee the correct selection of patients requiring treatment for incipient
pneumonia probably due to COVID-19 infection with minimal contact with clinical workers.
This Covid19 telemedicine system is based on medical records and some simple apps that provide a home-
based risk estimation. The people suspected of Covid19 diseases should be monitored by health operators
and the data of patients at high risk will be submitted to an expert pulmonologist for a diagnosis and drug
treatment and/or oxygen support after diagnosis confirmation.

Conclusion

Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and e-Health systems, by comparison with conventional health services,
introduce added value and have a positive impact at social, economic and cultural levels. e-Health and
Telemedicine have many socio-economic benefits and can generate new sources of revenues for service
providers and equipment suppliers, and can optimize the use of available of human and capital resources.
In general, benefit regard improved quality of treatment and patient care, more readily available information,
greater accessibility, more timely information, faster and more accurate decision- making, savings in time
and costs for staff and specialists.
So there are benefits for patients (cutting down on journeys to major health centres or for specialist
consultations, reducing the length of stay in hospital and the cost of hospitalization, since the patient can be
monitored at a distance) and also for the providers of health services (reduction in operating costs through
centralization and optimization of resources -. expertise, laboratories, equipment; reduction in travel costs
and time for specialists visiting other hospitals for consulting, reduction in costs of training and updating and
improvement of specialists qualifications through distance, teaching and access to medical databases).
In general, the benefits associated with the introduction of e-health and telemedicine can be:
Health education of professionals operators and even of people and users;
Employment opportunities for health operators at a peripheral level;
Diffusion of medical knowledge;
Availability of normal (or on demand) health treatments, in distant areas to prevent the population from
moving away;
Improvement of health indicators used by international and national government agencies
But some problems in e-health and telemedicine activities remain. These problems are related to
organizational aspects and not to technological.
The problem in Italy is to remove these kinds of obstacles and to involve the large world that stays around
the health sector (biomedical research centres, hospitals, ICT companies, health authorities at local, regional
and national level) in order to achieve the best conditions for moving from experimental projects and
prototypes to real medical ICT products, as systems and services for the citizen.

References

 Castelnuovo Gianluca, Giada Pietrabissa, Gian Mauro Manzoni, Francesco Sicurello, Enrico Molinari; Boosting
remote monitoring using pulse oximeters to help Italian health care system in managing COVID-19 patients.
BMJ March 2020;368:m1065

 Murgia, Fabrizio; Tagliente, Irene; Zoppis, Italo; Mauri, Giancarlo; Sicurello, Francesco; Bella, Francesco; Mercuri,
Vanessa; Santoro, Eugenio; Castelnuovo, Gianluca; Bella, Sergio; Trend of FEV1 in Cystic Fibrosis patients: A
telehomecare experience. PubliCatt 2016

 Eugenio Santoro, Gianluca Castelnuovo, Italo Zoppis, Giancarlo Mauri, Francesco Sicurello; Social media and
mobile applications in chronic disease prevention and management: Frontiers in Psychology, section
Psychology for Clinical Settings, 2015

 Gianluca Castelnuovo, Italo Zoppis, Eugenio Santoro, Martina Ceccarini, Giada Pietrabissa, Gian Mauro Manzoni,
Stefania Corti, Maria Borrello, Emanuele Maria Giusti, Roberto Cattivelli, Anna Melesi, Giancarlo Mauri, Enrico
Molinari, Francesco Sicurello: Managing chronic pathologies with a stepped mHealth-based approach in
clinical psychology and medicine; Frontiers in Psychology 2015

 Francesco Sicurello; Developments of Medical Informatics and Telemedicine in the Global Society; IMIT
(International Medical Informatics and Telemedicine) Conference, Geneva 2014

 F. Sicurello; International Cooperation in Medical Informatics and Telemedicine: LAMIT (Latino American
Medical Informatics and Telemedicine) conference, Lima – Peru, 2012

 Forlani E, De Lazzari C, Maiolino P, Poli A, Pugliese A, Rabbito C, Sicurello F.; The first veterinary
telemedicine study group. J Telemed Telecare. 2010;16(3):162-3.

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