ARMENIAN ASSOCIATION OF TELEMEDICINE

Promotion of Home Telehealth Services, and Development of Mobile eHealth Applications in Armenia.

Among AATM’s plans for strategic development of health ICT in Armenia special place is devoted to remote patients’ monitoring and mobile (wireless) eHealth technologies. Importance of home telehealth lies in better management of chronic conditions and maintenance of health status in target groups of patients. Mobile telehealth (mHealth) emerges as one of the most promising areas of development in health ICT.

In June 2012 AATM established cooperation with a telehealth and mHealth equipment producer company MegaKoto from Finland, and mHealth services provider Mobile Cardio from The Netherlands aiming to develop Mobile ECG Telemonitoring system for local cardiology clinics. The system consists of the central data server connected via dedicated lines with monitoring workstations installed at cardiology institutions and clinics, and lightweight highly portable single lead ECG sensors coupled via Bluetooth with Android smart phones with special application preinstalled. The sensor is reading ECG signal and sending it to the phone’s app, which uploads the data onto the server through mobile broadband connection. The monitoring workstation receives the signal in real time from the server, and displays it on large LED screens, for 7/24 live ECG monitoring by dedicated personnel. Besides that, authorized physicians are able to access their patients’ ECG data on the server, both live-streamed and stored, via special Web Access platform from any device connected to Internet. Thus, the system allows any person with heart problem to remain under ECG-surveillance 7/24, theoretically as long as the cardiologist deems necessary. Such breakthrough telemonitoring technology is being made available for Armenian population for the first time ever. The initial installations are already done (including the server and one monitoring workstation at one of the country’s leading cardiology facilities); the system has been tested in real life patients, and should now enter the commercial exploitation phase.

2015-06-24

Session “ICT & Innovative Technologies in Medicine and Healthcare”

@ 8th Annual DigiTec Business Forum, June 20, 2015, Yerevan, Armenia-Marriott

Co-located with 3rd German-Armenian Telemedicine and eHealth Workshop

& TEMPUS IV BME-ENA Project Dissemination Event

The session “ICT and Innovative Technologies in Medicine and Healthcare” took place on Saturday, June 20, 2015, at 12:00-17:00at Armenia-Marriott hotel in Yerevan. The session was co-hosted by Armenian Association of Telemedicine (AATM) and Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), within the frameworks of the DigiTec Business Forum – the largest digital technology forum and exposition held annually under the High Patronage of the Prime Minister of Armenia, Mr. Hovik Abrahamyan.
The session was conducted jointly with the Ministry of Health of Republic of Armenia, and featured keynote addresses, discussions, lectures and business presentations by government officials, experts, academia leaders, healthcare institutions, and commercial entities in the field of eHealth, telemedicine and other medical technologies.
This year the Session was co-located with the 3rd German-Armenian Telemedicine and eHealth Workshop within the frameworks of the project jointly funded by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Armenian State Committee on Science (SCS)
The Session also included a presentation by AATM President Dr. Georgi Chaltikyan titled "New European Joint Master's Program in Biomedical Engineering (BME) in Armenia” describing a new educational program in medical technologies launching in September 2015 at National Polytechnic University of Armenia (NPUA) and Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University (RAU), that is being developed under TEMPUS IV project BME-ENA.
Apart from co-hosting and moderating the session, Armenian Association of Telemedicine, together with their Armenian partners from NPUA and RAU, as well as international partners from Deggendorf Institute of Technology (Germany) and Klughammer GmbH (Germany) also presented with a stand (a “booth”) in the exhibition area of DigiTec Business Forum 2015 throughout Friday, June 19, and Saturday, June 20, where several thousands of attendees of the Forum were given information about ongoing international projects, including TEMPUS BME-ENA Project, and German-Armenian Telemedicine and eHealth Project. On Friday, June 19, at 10 AM AATM’s projects and programs were also presented at the official Opening of the Forum with Tour of the Exhibition to the Prime Minister's delegation.