Kick-off for the CV-Prevital project, dedicated to cardiovascular prevention
Early diagnosis and digital medicine, this is how the CV-Prevital project plans to make a strong impact to the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
Kicking off this March, the project will work for the next three years. CV-Prevital is promoted and funded by the Ministry of Health. It involves 17 Reference Research and Healthcare Centres (IRCCS) part of the National Cardiology Network and makes use of the support of GARR which, in addition to connecting the various institutes via optical fiber, will make its cloud platform available for the project.
The project will evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of a ground-breaking approach to primary cardiovascular prevention, through the early identification of subjects at risk, and the combination of conventional approaches of primary cardiovascular prevention ('standard care'), with digital medicine. Information technologies played a strategic role by offering the capacity of optimally monitor and manage the people involved.
An initiative solicited, approved and funded by the Ministry of Health, CV-Prevital aims to reduce the burden of cardiovascular diseases, which are still the main cause of morbidity and mortality in Italy today.
The project will also develop a dedicated coaching app: a real personal trainer who will give advice on changes to the patients’ lifestyle, check their progresses and schedules control appointments. This will be a smartphone app, intuitive and user friendly, aimed at monitoring (blood pressure, height, weight, blood sugar, cholesterol, sleep quality, therapy), raising awareness (it will send personalized messages through algorithms defined by the specialists of the Cardiology Network and 'educational' activities to increase user awareness) and remote-manage cardiovascular risk factors, with engaging and playful features to encourage its regular use.
Before being archived in the project database, the patients’ data coming from the app will be accessible to researchers in a secure mode over GARR cloud resources. The GARR Cloud is specifically designed to meet the needs of the research community and maintain their data management within the national borders.
The expected benefits are manifold and concern patients, professionals and decision makers. For citizens, there is an innovative and personalized approach to cardiovascular prevention, education towards healthy lifestyles and a better control of risk factors.
For health professionals, the project represents a coordinated network strategy for collaboration between general practitioners, specialists, researchers, other health professionals and citizens.
For decision makers, the project will enable the acquisition of large amounts of data, which will help strategic planning and resource allocation in prevention.
Other project partners are the Italian Society for Digital Health and Telemedicine (SISDT) and the Romeo and Enrica Invernizzi Foundation. The Bioengineering and Medical Informatics Consortium - CBIM, YouCo, a company expert in digital citizen experience projects and some pharmacies in the Lombardy region collaborate in its implementation.
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