Back ground
An increasing number of elderly people lead to increased pressure in hospitals. Therefore, targeted attention is focused on preventing acute hospitalisation of the elderly. Prevention requires, however, timely identification of elderly people in risk of being hospitalised.
A research project has shown that acute hospitalisation among 70+ years occurs after a significant increase in the need for home care and contact with their own doctor.
The aim of the project
The project wishes to develop, test and validate a sentinel algorithm, which is applied to individual municipal care data and health insurance data. That way it will be possible to identify elderly people in risk of getting hospitalised.
The sentinel algorithm will be tested in the municipality of Svendborg. Identified citizens will get home visits by the acute nurse, who brings telemedicine equipment (GER I suitcase) with him.
The equipment in the GER I suitcase enables clinically objective studies and can quickly upload the results to a generic telemedicine platform, accessible to the citizen's own doctor and possibly hospital doctor.
This gives the doctor a more qualified decision base for the choice of treatment, and unnecessary hospitalisation can be reduced.
The project outcome
A validated sentinel algorithm that will be implemented throughout the country and used for targeted intervention in primary health care.
Contact
Work package leader: Karen Andersen-Ranberg, Professor, Clinical Department
Partners
Uffe Kock Wiil, Professor, SDU Health Informatics and Technology, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute