1- Scientific context and project objectives

For 2 years, the association HealthGrid, in partnership with the Corpuscular Physics Laboratory (LPC) and specialist doctors at the Gabriel Montpied university hospital, has been developing and implementing telemedical services in China and Burkina-Faso. The purpose is to give a boost to medical development by providing services that enable medical information to be shared to assist with patient follow-up and diagnosis. This partnership has led to the development of prototypes. For paediatric neurosurgery, an initial server for sharing medical files has been developed for pre- and post-operation follow-up of patients suffering from macrocephaly. It has been tested with Chinese specialists in the province of Yunnan in the south-west of China. To improve accessibility to the service, the computer server has been installed in the neurosurgery department of Hospital no.9 in Shanghai. For ophthalmology, a server model for sharing medical files has been developed to assist in the diagnosis of patients suffering from diabetic retinopathy in partnership with the university hospital of Ouagadougou in Burkina-Faso. This was designed at the LPC to enable surgeons from France and Burkina-Faso working at the Schiphra community health clinic in Ouagadougou to share patient records. These developments are still at the prototype stage. The implementation of these services on a grid-type facility would make these telemedical services more reliable. The aim of this project is therefore to develop a much more robust and “gridified” version of the services provided to doctors in Burkina-Faso and China using the latest distributed data management tools (i.e. AMGA). Based on the experience gained over recent years, the task would be to set up an operational telemedical service for specialists working at the university hospital in Ouagadougou and at the Schiphra community health centre to strengthen the already strong links forged between specialists in Clermont-Ferrand and Burkina-Faso. The new version will also be used in China on the server of Hospital no. 9 in Shanghai.

2- Project description

Based on the experience gained in developing and using telemedical services for developing countries, the purpose of the project is to produce a software tool for sharing medical data in the fields of ophthalmology and neurosurgery. The data can be information or medical images useful for the second diagnosis or pre- or post-operation follow-up of patients. The recent appearance of basic services managing data distributed in a grid environment now opens up the opportunity to develop application programs managing secure access to medical information. The tool will be developed in close cooperation with the specialist doctors at the Gabriel Montpied university hospital and Burkina-Faso doctors at the university hospital in Ouagadougou and the Schiphra community health centre.

3- Public or controlled use

Use of the information system is strictly controlled as the medical data is confidential and must meet legislative and regulatory requirements. However, the software developments use open source technologies.

4- Expected results

The expected results are mainly the design of a grid-based information system managing patient and medical data and images and providing an operational telemedical application tool at the end of the LifeGrid project and the development of a partnership between specialist doctors in Clermont-Ferrand, Burkino-Faso and China. The project will develop the control of distributed data management tools which might be of interest to all of the LifeGrid project stakeholders.

LifeGrid, the regional information system