A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SERVICE FOR E-HEALTH

The introduction of ICT in health care has two main goals, on the one hand, to have high quality performances for patient management and, on the other, to contain health care expenses. Usually the reduction in health care spending corresponds to a low quality of care service. The use of new technologies for health care can mitigate the cutbacks by providing innovative solutions able to maintain high level of quality at a low cost. This is the main challenge of the UBICARE project that aims at supporting the Hub & Spoke model in medicine, fostering the empowerment of local hospitals, general practitioners, nurses and families. In other words, the UBI-CARE project is aimed at creating a social network to share clinical data and knowledge in order to favor the de-hospitalization of patients suffering from peritoneal dialysis and chronic heart failure. In this context, the paper describes the Knowledge Management Service component aimed at managing all the resources and functionalities that can support the empowerment process of both the patients and the medical and paramedical staff involved in managing a patient.