Aerospace medical expert joins future hospital programme
In April, the Asklepios Future Hospital (AFH) Programme, a multinational cooperation of 25 business partners, gained a new partner, Prof. Rupert Gerzer, Director of the German Aerospace Centre, an expert in distance medical services. In a partnership begun over five years ago with Microsoft and Intel, Asklepios designed the AHF to develop special hospital and entire healthcare system information technologies (IT).
In 2006, the partners launched the OneIT project, which connected the Asklepios clinics with a uniform IT-system.
The next step will be to connect all players in the healthcare market with the patients via information technologies, Dr Tobias Kaltenbach, Chairman of Asklepios Hospital Group and head of business management explained.
Thus Prof. Gerzer entered the AFH programme. At the Institute of Aerospace Medicine the professor is primarily responsible for the health of European astronauts, and also research development. Further basic demands are to provide tailored services for the astronauts, a functioning system that provides them with information, particularly if far way – in outer space, for example -- and finally, data privacy. ‘All these tasks will also be general in future medicine,’ Prof. Gerzer pointed out.
First, prevention will be a vital component, to reduce overall costs in healthcare systems, he said. Then, individual, automated systems for personal healthcare will not be avoided in future: A shortage of physicians makes the development of tailored medical services necessary.
Additionally, a big future challenge will be to offer patients the right treatment at the right time. ‘A future task will be to retrieve essential information from the growing data graveyards in time, while ensuring data protection,’ he pointed out.
Only good IT solutions can solve all these tasks. In this area, the Institute of Aerospace Medicine is in step. For a decade the institute has been an official partner of the German armed forces (Deutsche Bundeswehr), developing efficient, secure communication pathways in telemedicine. Hence the AHF partners were pleased to welcome aboard their new partner.
07.07.2010
