Ditis: A Collaborative Virtual Medical Team for Home Healthcare of Cancer Patients

Abstract

Complex and chronic illnesses, such as cancer, demand the use of specialised treatment protocols, administered and monitored by a patient centric co-ordinated team of multidisciplinary healthcare professionals. Care of chronic illnesses (e.g. cancer patients) by a team of health care professionals at home is often necessary due to the protracted length of the illness, the differing medical conditions, as well as the different stages of the chronic illness. Most importantly home care can offer comfort for the patient and their family, in the familiar surrounding of their home, and at the same time being cost effective, as compared to the high cost of hospital beds. Hospital based treatment for chronic patients is limited, often demand based for short periods of time, used mainly for acute incidents. As it is not possible for the health care team to be physically present by the patient at all times, or at any time physically together, whilst the patient is undergoing treatment at home (or work), a principal aim is to overcome the difficulty of coordination and communication, through DITIS (ΔΙΤΗΣ, in Greek, stands for: Network for Medical Collaboration). DITIS is a system that supports dynamic Virtual Collaborative HealthCare Teams dealing with the home-healthcare. It supports the dynamic creation, management and co-ordination of virtual medical teams, for the continuous treatment of the patient at home, and if needed for periodic visits to places of specialised treatment and back home.