- Over 260,000 residents and travelers to Madeira Islands can use the digital health solution free of charge
- Easy access to healthcare data from the public healthcare services, via a European electronic health record – the Smart4Health platform
The Public Health Service of the Autonomous Region of Madeira – SESARAM, EPERAM – has successfully completed the integration with the prototype of a pan-European digital patient record, the Smart4Health platform, at the end of 2022. As a result, all individuals registered in the SESARAM patient portal (residents and tourists) are now able to synchronize their healthcare data with the Smart4Health platform. This allows any user of Madeira’s public health services to share its status information, medical records and clinical data, or test results, securely with other healthcare professionals and family members, anywhere and anytime, via the platform.
Madeira is a European pioneer in digital health data management
SESARAM was formally established in May 2003 and currently serves more than 260,000 residents and travelers receiving medical treatment in the Madeira Islands.
It’s currently organized around 3 hospitals and 47 public health care facilities.
In the 27th of May of 2003, SESARAM was formally established and from that day on, there was a strategy of interoperability between all IT systems and now all public healthcare units in Madeira Islands share an unique and innovative health information system, known as SEIS-RAM, where each person has an unique electronic health record (EHR), with all the medical records and structured social clinical data included.
The involvement of the Madeira region in EU projects such as Smart4Health, as well as the establishment of the Madeira Digital Health and Wellbeing initiative, involving SESARAM, the Regional Secretariat of Health and Civil Protection, the Regional Secretary of Tourism and Culture, and UNINOVA (Smart4Health coordinator), demonstrates that digital health is clearly a strategic area for Madeira, aiming to provide better care with the patient in the center of its activities.
Barbara Spínola, Director of Information Services, Tourism Projects and Events, Regional Directorate of Tourism, said: “It is exciting to bring a new and innovative platform to Madeira, providing an easy and convenient way for local citizens and tourists to have access to their health data anytime, both locally and while traveling abroad. We believe that the Smart4Health platform has the potential to transform the way people in
Madeira, Portugal, and Europe envision the concept of health data access and how they can manage their own health data on one central platform and we are looking forward to seeing the positive impact it will have on the local and tourist community of Madeira.”
Smart4Health is the first prototype of a pan-European electronic health record
The project aims to achieve a cross-border paradigm shift in healthcare: all EU citizens should be able to manage their own health data in a self-determined, secure, and digital
way. To this end, the consortium, consisting of 19 partners from various European countries such as Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Austria and Portugal, has been developing the Smart4Health platform since January 2019 based on real-life use cases from the fields of physiotherapy, nursing, and tourism. In addition to managing individual health data, users can share their data with trusted healthcare personnel regardless of the location, and voluntarily donate the pseudonymized data to research.
A milestone for Smart4Health
The Autonomous Region of Madeira, itself a partner in the consortium, supported the integration of the SESARAM health service with the Smart4Health platform. Pablo Guerrero, Smart4Health Project Leader and Team Lead Collaborative Projects at Data4Life, said: “For many years, Madeira has been a pioneer in health data, interoperability, and digital health”. He adds: “Smart4Health is an unprecedented pan-European project with a great vision focusing on EU citizens and their needs from the beginning. The integration with SESARAM is a milestone for the project.” Data4Life is a non-profit health tech organization based in Potsdam (Germany) and technology partner in the Smart4Health consortium. Among other responsibilities, Data4Life has developed the platform’s software, storage and encryption technology, and enabled data interoperability with the SESARAM system. In order for the data to be effectively linked between SESARAM and the Smart4Health platform, users must register on the Smart4Health platform via the website (app.smart4health.eu). Access is via two-factor authentication and a data key and, for some European Member States, also via electronic identities (eID).
With this project milestone, a main goal has been achieved by having developed the prototype of a platform that enables a citizen-centric EU-EHR exchange for personalized health data.
To mark the occasion, the consortium invites to the closing event of this project phase in Madeira this week, where Pablo Guerrero and other representatives of the Smart4Health partners will provide insights into the project and its current status.
The program can be followed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Smart4HealthEU.
