Strategic Intelligence Monitor on Personal Health Systems Phase 3 (SIMPHS3). Diabmemory (Austria). Case Study Report

In 2010, the Austrian Social Insurance Institution for Railways and Mining Industry (Versicherungsanstalt für Eisenbahnen und Bergbau, VAEB) started a proof-of-concept diabetes telemonitoring project called DiabMemory, as part of a wider programme called "Health Dialogue" (“Gesundheitsdialog”). DiabMemory allows diabetes patients to track health parameters using a mobile phone and share this data with their General Practitioner (GP). After being diagnosed with type 1 or 2 diabetes in primary or secondary care, patients insured by VAEB are given the opportunity to stay for a period of one to three weeks at a special rehabilitation facility in Breitenstein (Lower Austria) to receive education on all aspects relevant to their health and medical conditions like nutrition, physical activity, and psychological aspects. If they decide to join the programme, they receive the equipment and training on how to use the DiabMemory system and how to integrate it into their everyday lives. After their stay in Breitenstein, participants are able to use DiabMemory without further help. A web-based application allows health professionals responsible for therapy management within the Health Dialogue programme to access patient data and adjust therapy plans when needed. Moreover, they can provide users with motivational messages and feedback can be sent directly to the patient’s mobile.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Digital transformation in healthcare: an innovative business plan for an application digitizing physical rehabilitation

The health care system adapts to innovations very slowly, as strict rules control all measures. It is even more challenging when one wants to introduce a digital solution for the healthcare market. Even minor changes to the code can mean major hurdles for approvals. This challenge was taken up in the following master thesis. The status quo of gait analysis has hardly been innovated for decades. The approach of reha buddy is to analyze how a human walks through wireless sensors. This represents an innovation that will revolutionize the market for gait analysis. Above all, trends of the last two years, which were pushed even more by the last pandemic, have shown that there is probably no better time to pursue this project. Additionally, a literature review and expert interviews were conducted to support all statements in the thesis. What is more, for a precise examination of each chapter of the business plan, a market analysis was carried out focusing on all specific characteristics of the health care market. The team of reha buddy has to overcome some major obstacles in the next few years but is well-positioned with their team of experts who set some important milestones for managing those hurdles. The result of this work is a business plan which clarifies that reha buddy's vision has an entrepreneurial foundation and that the team's idea should be pursued.O Sistema de Saúde adapta-se às inovações muito lentamente, uma vez que regras rígidas controlam todas as medidas. É um desafio ainda maior quando se deseja introduzir uma solução digital no setor da Saúde. Mesmo pequenas alterações no código podem significar grandes dificuldades para aprovações. Este desafio é abordado na presente tese de mestrado. O status quo da locomoção praticamente não foi inovado durante décadas. A abordagem do Reha Buddy passa por analisar como um humano se desloca através de sensores sem fios, o que representa uma inovação que irá revolucionar o mercado da locomoção. Acima de tudo, as tendências dos últimos dois anos, que foram impulsionadas ainda mais pela última pandemia, mostraram que provavelmente não há melhor momento para avançar com este projeto. Foi realizada uma revisão de literatura, assim como entrevistas com especialistas com o objetivo de apoiar todas as afirmações. Adicionalmente, para uma análise eficaz de cada capítulo do plano de negócios, foi realizada uma análise de mercado com foco em todas as características específicas do mercado da Saúde. A equipa do Reha Buddy terá que superar alguns obstáculos importantes nos próximos anos; está, no entanto, bem posicionada com a sua equipa de especialistas que estabeleceu alguns marcos importantes para gerir esses obstáculos. O resultado do presente projeto é um plano de negócios que esclarece que a visão do Reha Buddy tem uma base empreendedora e que a ideia apresentada pela equipa deve ser concretizada

Rights-Based and Tech-Driven: Open Data, Freedom of Information, and the Future of Government Transparency

Open data policy mandates that government proactively publish its data online for the public to reuse. It is a radically different approach to transparency than traditional right-to-know strategies as embodied in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation in that it involves ex ante rather than ex post disclosure of whole datasets. Although both open data and FOIA deal with information sharing, the normative essence of open data is participation rather than litigation. By fostering public engagement, open data shifts the relationship between state and citizen from a monitorial to a collaborative one, centered around using information to solve problems together. This Essay explores the theory and practice of open data in comparison to FOIA and highlights its uses as a tool for advancing human rights, saving lives, and strengthening democracy. Although open data undoubtedly builds upon the fifty-year legal tradition of the right to know about the workings of one\u27s government, open data does more than advance government accountability. Rather, it is a distinctly twenty-first century governing practice borne out of the potential of big data to help solve society\u27s biggest problems. Thus, this Essay charts a thoughtful path toward a twenty-first century transparency regime that takes advantage of and blends the strengths of open data\u27s collaborative and innovation-centric approach and the adversarial and monitorial tactics of freedom of information regimes

A Transnational Analysis of Elderly European Wealth Distributions: Developing and Testing New Methodologies within the new Household Financial and Consumption Survey

Transnational wealth inequality is an expanding field of study. However, the field has many limitations especially relating to problems of data availability, methodologies used, and the very limited pool of existing transnational literature. Alongside these basic limitations is a predominating focus on populations as a whole that correspond with a dearth of studies concerned specifically with elderly wealth distributions. This thesis’ objective is to tackle these three problematic areas in the field, but with a specific focus on the elderly. In particular, new methodologies for analysing transnational distributions of wealth are explored and developed. These new methodologies are then tested within the Household Financial and Consumption Survey environment specifically focusing on the elderly population. This new survey provides an extensive high quality database on household financial characteristics that are pivotal to transnational and sub-cohort focused analysis. The analysis generates several results. The first is a tested framework of a multifaceted approach for describing wealth distributions. This approach counters the widespread habit of using summary statistics which do not fully describe distributions. The results also provide evidence for two distinct macro distributions of wealth within the countries observed. These distributions represent two ends on a spectrum which contains all the possible wealth distribution shapes. The combination of developing new methodological tools of analysis and testing them within a new data environment contribute significantly to the field. These new tools will allow for a standardised view providing deep level analysis which is still applicable to a large dataset

Rights-Based and Tech-Driven: Open Data, Freedom of Information, and the Future of Government Transparency

Open data policy mandates that government proactively publish its dataonline for the public to reuse. It is a radically different approach to transparency than traditional right-to-know strategies as embodied in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation in that it involves ex ante rather than ex post disclosure of whole datasets. Although both open data and FOIA deal with information sharing, the normative essence of open data is participation rather than litigation. By fostering public engagement, open data shifts the relationship between state and citizen from a monitorial to a collaborative one, centered around using information to solve problems together