The Healthreats project
The project
HEALTHREATS is a project promoted by an international consortium, coordinated by ASL Brescia, and partly-financed by the European Commission within the Public Health programme. HEALTHREATS addresses enhancing the capability of health institutions in Europe to respond efficiently and in a co-ordinated manner to threats to health; focussing in particular on influenza pandemic preparedness and response. The result of the project will be a support system including Processes, a Decision Support System (DSS) and Training (PDT) which will be tested in Italy, Slovenia, Romania and Spain. A support system is understood within HEALTHREATS as a software system able to assist the managers responsible for the strategic decisions underpinning the launch of operational interventions in response to health threats.
The objectives
HEALTHREATS aims at developing an integrated package – PDT – including processes, an innovative DSS and a structured training plan and training material for Crisis Management in the context of health threats; with particular focus on influenza pandemic preparedness and response. The PDT will be tested in Italy, Slovenia, Romania, and Spain; however the software is intended to be generic, customisable, adaptable and transferable to other regions in Europe.
Detailed objectives include:
- Development - creation of an integrated PDT package combining processes with decision support and training for health threats management
- Optimisation - optimising crisis management and health emergencies reaction
- Support - supporting strategic as well as operational decision making for facing health threats
- Definition - ensuring integrated and inter-sectorial health strategies granting high level human health protection
The Work plan
The HEALTHREATS work plan includes the following main phases:
- A thorough analysis of the normative and methodological state-of-the-art, in terms of best practice in health and Crisis Management procedures and DSS systems. The major international systems will be addressed, identifying which best practices can be transferred applied and replicated
- Definition and generalisation of the HEALTHREATS system requirements, through the description of the application scenarios, the identification and analysis of the needs and of the potential system application
- Mapping, revision and modelling of procedures for the leading chain and crisis management, distinguishing between alert, pre-alarm, alarm and emergency scenarios
- Designing and developing the DSS, including: architecture design, detailed design, software development (and production of the empty system), knowledge acquisition and construction of the knowledge bases, testing and evaluation
- Designing and developing of a learning programme for training of the personnel (top managers, crises managers, operative units’ responsible) on the HEALTHREATS procedural and system aspects, including the production of training materials and tools, the creation of a Virtual Learning Community and the actual training of a selected set of persons at the site of HEALTHREATS partners health authorities
- Assessing the HEALTHREATS performance, including an assessment of each component, activity and objective in a quantitative and objective manner, defining specific parameters to be measured against targets
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