CHILDCARE: a collaborative environment for the monitoring of children healthcare at home

This paper provides an overview of the concept, the functionalities and the architecture of the CHILDCARE platform. The CHILDCARE system aims at supporting the out-of-hospital continuous healthcare management of chronically ill children. Special focus is placed on the utilization of the latest technology accomplishments towards the incorporation of teleconference sessions, collaborative spaces and intelligent add-ons over a common secure platform. This combination allows for: (a) remote communication between health experts and the child´s family, (b) efficient collaboration between the responsible doctor and healthcare professionals, (c) interfacing legacy hospital information systems to obtain health records, (d) set-up, execution and monitoring of health management plans, (e) ubiquitous access from multiple devices, (f) role-based management of the actors with respect to their actual involvement in the healthcare process, (g) confidentiality and security at all levels.