title: HEARTFAID: A knowledge based platform of services for supporting medical-clinical management of heart failure within elderly population.
abstract: HEARTFAID is a research and development project aimed at devising, developing and validating an innovative knowledge based platform of services, able to improve early diagnosis and to make more effective the medical-clinical management of heart diseases within elderly population. Chronic Heart Failure is one of the most remarkable health problems for prevalence and morbidity, especially in the developed western countries, with a strong impact in terms of social and economic effects. All these aspects are typically emphasized within the elderly population, with very frequent hospital admissions and a significant increase of medical costs. Recent studies and experiences have demonstrated that accurate heart failure management programs, based on a suitable integration of inpatient and outpatient clinical procedures, might prevent and reduce hospital admissions, improving clinical status and reducing costs. HEARTFAID aims at defining efficient and effective health care delivery organization and management models for the "optimal" management of the care in the field of cardiovascular diseases. The HEARTFAID innovative computerized system will improve the processes of diagnosis, prognosis and therapy provision, providing the following services: * electronic health record for easy and ubiquitous access to heterogeneous patients data;* integrated services for healthcare professionals, including patient telemonitoring, signal and image processing, alert and alarm system;* clinical decision support in the heart failure domain, based on pattern recognition in historical data, knowledge discovery analysis and inferences on patients' clinical data.The formalization of the pre-existing clinical knowledge and the discovery of new elicited knowledge represent the core of the HEARTFAID platform.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics, Informatics, Systems (DEIS), University of Calabria, Italy. mimmo.conforti@unical.it
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Conforti
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Costanzo
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Perticone
authors.forename: Gianfranco
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Parati
authors.forename: Kalina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawecka-Jaszcz
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marsh
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Biniaris
authors.forename: Manolis
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stratakis
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fontanelli
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guerri
authors.forename: Ovidio
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Salvettis
authors.forename: Manolis
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsiknakis
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chiarugi
authors.forename: Dragan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gamberger
authors.forename: Mariaconsuelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Valentini
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002303:Cardiac Output, Low / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D005103:Expert Systems; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D051188:Knowledge Bases; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D018511:Systems Integration; D017216:Telemedicine