The international annual conference on Integrated Care was held from 1 to 3 April.
The congress was organized by Osakidetza, BIOEF, the Health Department of the Basque Government, the Donostia-San Sebastian City Council and the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, along with the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), under the title “A shared culture for change: Evaluating and implementing models of integrated people-centred services”. The 19th edition gathered over 1,300 health and integrated care professionals from over 60 countries.
ICIC19 San Sebastian-Basque Country has become a forum for collective consideration of future challenges that countries must face within people-focused care models, the generation of shared cultures and an increasingly integrated socio-healthcare model, among others. In this sense, the Basque Country is committed to a model of integrated healthcare that is coordinated with social services. The Basque Country has 13 Integrated Health Organisations (IHO) that promote their people-centred social care efforts.
During the event, over 350 projects and papers were presented, 125 workshops were organised, and over 450 posters were exhibited. In addition, the Singapore delegation had the opportunity to learn first-hand about the Basque Healthcare System, their social-healthcare policies, their comprehensive approach to active ageing, and the various social programmes developed within the Basque Country.
In regards to the issues, Kronikgune and Osakidetza were present through the C3-Cloud, ACT@Scale, Scirocco and Scirocco Exchange European projects.
C3-Cloud was presented in the session “Integrated Care in Europe” as a facilitator for coordinated care for multimorbid patients through an integrated and preventive system that supports clinical decision-making processes. Within the project framework, modules to support decision-making which include over 300 rules were developed. These rules were drafted by combining clinical evidence-based guides for diabetes, renal failure, depression, and heart failure. These modules, combined with a single interface for patients and professionals, provide a seamless experience throughout the patient care process. Furthermore, the project issues warnings and recommendations for the patient and their caregiver alike.
C3-Cloud was one of the 13 innovations showcased at the “Innovation Zone“. More specifically, two one-hour sessions were held to demonstrate the performance of the C3-Cloud system. The seamless coordination of activities developed by the multidisciplinary team of health professionals and the patients / informal caregivers were also showcased. These activities include the creation of a personalised patient plan based on decision-making support models, patient access to their personalised plan, the execution of the activities and the update of the plan.
Meanwhile, the ACT@Scale project held its closing conference. A great number of attendees, including members of the consortium and professionals from different international institutions and organisations were at the event. In addition to presenting and sharing their experience regarding the use of collaborative methodology for scaling-up and transfer of knowledge between European regions, they also showcased the results and conclusions of this 3-year study. In parallel, Osakidetza presented their work framed within the project to improve the pathway for integrated care of multimorbid patients. They shared the steps taken to improve this corporate programme and explained the process being implementing to scale-up and extend it throughout the entire Osakidetza. A project led by the Basque country regarding a selection of services and methods within the framework of ACT@Scale was also presented in a poster.
Lastly, the SCIROCCO project organised a workshop with the participation of Osakidetza and Kronikgune. This was an opportunity to share the experience in the Basque Country following the “Twinning & coaching” process with their Scottish partner. In this initiative, a Basque delegation visited Scotland to learn about their model, which involves the third sector to provide integrated care. Within the joint workshop, which included the participation of the Vigour and the SCIROCCO projects, aside from the Basque “twinning” experience, the new European project SCIROCCO Exchange was made public.
If you want to learn more about the event, click here: https://integratedcarefoundation.org/events/icic19-19th-international-conference-on-integrated-care-san-sebastian-basque-country
