Our Kid – a seven-foot high robot – is heading to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to showcase Manchester’s health technology expertise at ICT 2013, which runs from 6th to 8th November.
The multimedia statue, which is embedded with digital media, will attend on behalf of TRUSTECH, the North West NHS innovation service, to raise awareness of a €3 million EU project to enable patients to access their healthcare records via mobile phones when overseas.
The DECIPHER PCP project brings together TRUSTECH and Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as the UK lead with organisations in Finland, Italy and Spain to investigate ways to allow secure cross-border access to existing electronic patient records.
Dr Richard Deed of TRUSTECH said: “Our Kid is a novel way of getting the message across that technology is a key element of delivering better healthcare services across Europe. For example, providing cross-border access to medical records will help patients who need medical treatment while overseas. ICT 2013 is an excellent opportunity for us to reach technology companies which could help us to achieve this.
Former Manchester United and City player Brian Kidd was on hand to launch Our Kid’s European tour. Currently joint assistant manager at City, he commented: “It sounds brilliant and as someone who travels around Europe so much, I can easily see the benefits of being able to have access to parts of your health record, while travelling.”
A team from TRUSTECH is also attending the E Health Innovation Live event in Birmingham on 4th and 5th November, to meet both SMEs and some of the world’s leading software companies.
Companies interested in bidding for the 900,000 euros DECIPHER PCP fund to develop and test mobile technology to deliver cross-border health information can find out more at: www.decipherpcp.eu