Building a bridge between health and social care

European regions follow the track of ICT-based Integrated care

Barcelona, Catalonia (E), 28 June 2013

How to organise the future of health and social care?

This was the question that European regions discussed during the Seminar on ICT-based integrated care, organised by the Assembly of European Regions (AER) in the framework of SmartCare, a project funded by the European programme ICT PSP.

Integrated eCare aims at closing the traditional gap that often exists between health and social care in terms of delivery, management and organisation, thus bringing a response to the fragmentation of services, and creating opportunities for synergies and increased quality of services.

Why do we need to integrate health and social care?

• to improve the quality and continuity of care for our patients;
• to tackle the increasing demand for care due to demographic and social changes;
• to make care systems more efficient.

The seminar constituted an opportunity for European regions to learn about the need for and the concept of integrated eCare, socio-economic aspects of integrated e-care and the approach of the SmartCare project towards service and care pathway development.

“I’m glad that we came together to better understand the potential of integrated care. This is just the beginning of a long path. It is essential to collect evidence on the benefits of integrated care service provision and to explore how new care models can be further deployed. The SmartCare project, to which AER is a partner, has a leading role in pursuing this mission, and AER member regions should follow its results closely” concluded Karsten Uno Petersen, President of the AER Committee on Social Policy and Public Health.

SmartCare – A project to join up ICT and Service Processes for Quality Integrated Care

Over 3 years, 10 regions will develop and pilot ICT-based integrated care services to collect evidence on the impacts of integrated eCare services and facilitate their wider deployment.

“With this event, our intention was to give an introduction to integrated care issues to regional politicians and civil servants. It is crucial to get them familiar with the topic, to enable them to gain a better understanding of it, and to give them the tools to decide about future care models”, affirmed Giulio Antonini, Coordinator of SmartCare.

The Assembly of European Regions (AER – aer.eu) is the largest independent network of regions in wider Europe. Bringing together 250 regions from 35 countries and 16 interregional organisations, AER is the political voice of its members and a forum for interregional co-operation.

For more information: info@aer.eu