The Regional Government Junta de Castilla y Leon Pioneer in Europe for Coordinated Health and Social Care

The Regional Government of Castille and Leon received in May 2019, following contract award in October 2018, the initial version of the first platform in Europe for coordinated health and social care, in the context of the Innovative Public Procurement project for innovative solutions for health and social care support for patients with chronic disease and/or social support needs, with particular relevance to a project for the “Development of innovation for the digital home and telecare services”. 

The telehealthcare platform is designed to import digital data from the health and social care systems, and from the digital home, via an interoperability module developed in a previous phase of the same project, and 

The project was launched via a cooperation agreement between the Regional Health Service, the Regional Social Services Department, the Institute for Business Competitiveness and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and establishes the Government of Castille and Leon as a pioneer in the field. It is the first project in Europe to face the challenges of ageing population and the increase in the frequency of chronic diseases from a health and social care perspective, using new technologies. Citizens will, with the forthcoming the roll out of the system, be able to receive health and social care services of higher quality and with more efficient use of public resources. 

Improvements in quality of life for people with dependency and their carers is seen in:- 

• Maintaining the person longer in their home environment 

• Increasing independence and improving the situation of people with support and self-support programmes 

• Strengthening the role of the carer and the efficiency of the support network 

The health and social care systems also see efficiency improvements from coordinated care by: 

• Promoting accessibility and continuity of care 

• Reducing waiting times 

The project is 50% financed by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), and is an excellent example of the process of Innovative Public Procurement. It will complete at the end of 2019. 

The Regional Government would like to thank the participating companies, Tunstall for providing the home devices, Getronics for the development of the interoperability module, and Victrix SocSan for the software platform.