For a Human-Centered AI

New portal and new TREC + App: a revolution in accessing digital Provincial Health Services

November 15, 2021

The new platform TreC+, developed thanks to the contribution of doctors and citizens, is available free of charge to all members of the provincial health system as of today. It will be the single point of access to the digital services of the Trento Province healthcare system.

FBK/APSS/PAT/TS4.0 press release

“Approximately 170,000 Trentino residents already use TreC by accessing the portal, and 62,000 from the TreC_FSE app. The goal, with this new platform, is to reach all residents”- said Stefania Segnana, the Trento Province councilor for health, social policies, disability and family this morning during the presentation of the new TreC+ service at the Trento Province Government building.

What’s new? There will no longer be other applications or systems to access the APSS digital services as everything has been grouped in TreC +. Those who already use the TreC _FSE app , will just have to update it from the app stores (Android or Apple). Those who have never installed it can do so on their own by accessing the web portal trec.trentinosalute.net  and  following the guide instructions.

TreC+ is the result of a project commissioned by the TrentinoSalute4.0 Competence Center, which fielded the professional skills and organization of the three bodies, PAT, APSS and FBK. Today, thanks to TreC+, an evolution of the already well-known TreC (Citizen’s Clinical Records), the Trento Province Healthcare System can boast one of the first online service platforms in Italy that supports citizens from birth to old age, redesigning the citizen-healthcare relationship from a digital perspective.

Not only that: even non-residents in the Province will be able to use some of TreC+‘s new features, such as obtaining online medical reports.

“Today we are presenting an intelligent TreC + to our fellow citizens” – added Stefania Segnana. “This innovation speaks of us, speaks of the “Trentino system”, speaks of research, health policies and services for the care of people. And it speaks the language of this land, because it was built together with people and health professionals”. In short, TreC+ is the result of a great team work. “To create the system” – Segnana explained – “great attention was paid to both the needs of citizens and physicians. In these past few months, we have launched various experiments in the Province of Trento to adopt remote visiting as a practical tool and with the aim of creating a user experience that ensures ease of use and inclusion. Pediatrics, cardiology and ophthalmology are some of the trials underway in Trentino, in additio to those with diabetes and health prevention. Telemonitoring  for oncology patients and an information and education service dedicated to pregnant women will soon be added”.

In addition to the shared creation of health services, which is expressed through workshops with citizens and health professionals and the synergy between all skills, the final goal is to build a national community that will share good practices.

An example of this is the TreC platform which in recent months has been selected and reused also by other Italian regions. The adoption of a new architectural and development model for the TreC platform has helped the possibility of reuse of services in other public and private contexts. “PAT has signed agreements with the Emilia Romagna and Umbria Regions, the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli Isola Tiberina Hospital (Rome), the IRCCS Romagna Scientific Institute for the Study and Treatment of Tumors (Forlì), the Mauriziano Hospital and the ASL 3 in Turin, the Bologna AUSL. Contacts and interest in reusing our platform are also underway with the Friuli Venezia-Giulia Region, with Alessandria, Novara and Cuneo (Piedmont), the Sicily Region, the ASL of Ragusa (Sicily) and the ULSS 7 Pedemontana del Veneto”- councilor Segnana concluded.

“This renovated platform which includes more features is certainly not a finish line” – said acting director general of the Trento Province Healthcare System Antonio Ferro – “but an important step in the path to implementation of the new technologies that we have undertaken for some time now together with experienced partners such as FBK and PAT. The goal is to encourage an increasingly active participation of people in the choices that affect their health, by networking citizens-patients with health professionals. The pandemic experience has strongly pushed an organizational and technological change, effectively imposing a greater connection between the health system and those who use the services and a virtualization of remote services through telemedicine. We must continue on this track ”- concluded Ferro -“ because the use of widespread and easily usable technologies improves accessibility to health services”.

“TreC + will allow a reduction in the processing times for operational activities, redesigned by the needs linked to the pandemic” – says Pier Paolo Benetollo, director of the Trento Province hospital service of APSS and member of the executive committee of TS4.0. “Today, we can say that we have managed to optimize the entire televisiting process  to support healthcare facilities in providing remote health services in our province, and in particular remote medical examinations which by type, specialty, methods and contents, do not require the physical presence of the patient and the healthcare professional in the same place.Telemedicine is not the healthcare of the future, but that of the present”- Benetollo added. “It represents the frontier for following patients, especially chronic ones, making them autonomous as quickly as possible and facilitating their management in their homes, in the” neighborhood “in which they are used to living”.

Telemedicine trials will be extended to various medical specialties and will gradually be expanded and become a service offered by the Trento Province healthcare system. In fact, the APSS serves a population of more than half a million every day, in addition to tourists, spread over a mainly mountainous area of 6,207 km². It can count on the collaboration of about 8,500 employees who work in two main hospitals, five rterritorial hospitals and a few dozen clinics, in addition to the agreements with over 50 nursing homes and almost 400 doctors and pediatricians.

To manage all this and collect information on functional requirements useful for optimizing visit schedules and maximizing their effectiveness, APSS has activated an integrated hospital-community-home network, in which the various professionals who are already in the field (primary care doctors, pediatricians, nurses, doctor and surgeon specialists in the various areas of concern of the conditions) can interact with people remotely. “To develop TreC+” – Benetollo went on – “we thought of a solution that would integrate into our systems and processes, and implement the existing digital healthcare model, making it even simpler, more integrated and easy to use”.

TreC+ therefore consolidates and deploys the experimentations that have been tested in recent years in Trentino together with citizens and health professionals. Access to online health services is guaranteed by a single platform and a single app in which a constant exchange of data produced by patients and doctors flows and in which the level of care that is offered to citizens remains unchanged, constant and secure.

“TreC+ represents for FBK a start, not a finich line” – noted Andrea Simoni, Fondazione Bruno Kessler’s Secretary-General. “From the skills built up in 30 years of research, to an innovative vision for the Artificial Intelligence of the future, FBK directs its research toward experimentation with healthcare technologies that support people and do not replace them. It is part of our scientific approach, in this continuous learning cycle that we push together with APSS and the PAT Health Department, thanks to TrentinoSalute4.0.In recent years, we have experimented with telemedicine, which will be deployed soon. Now we are designing and experimenting the part of TreC + that wants to become ever smarter and integrated with applications such as virtual coaches, predictive models, chatbots, etc., which useartificial intelligence. Our research receives the contribution of clients, voluntary associations and schools, health professionals, health IT professionals, policy makers, healthcare managers, health professional associations, private companies and researchers/technologists for the construction of an efficient and fair public health system. It is a process that requires everyone’s involvement and is consistent with FBK ‘s mission which aims at scientific excellence at national and international level and aims, at the same time, to have an impact on Trentino communities in terms of immediate economic and social impact on the local area”.

“In 2016, the Department of health and social policies of the Province of Trento, the APSS and FBK established  TrentinoSalute4.0. The aim was to create a shared space for the development of digital healthcare that would take care of the health of Trentino residents throughout their liives. TreC+ represents the starting point of this path. The goal is to make the entire Trentino population, even if healthy and with occasional needs use it, and not only chronic patients or patients with treatments already in progress”- explained Giancarlo Ruscitti, general manager of PAT’s Health and Social Policy Department. “We are promoting a process of reorganization of Trentino’s healthcare with the aim of enhancing outreach to citizens for local and hospital services, according to a model of “polycentric community” and “polycentric hospital”. In this context, digital health and telemedicine, also as envisaged by mission 6 of the PNRR, will play an important role in promoting uniformity and equity of access to services, to strengthen and innovate the community network of services related to chronic diseases and to strengthen hospital-community integration ”- concluded Ruscitti.

How to access TreC + (please see information sheet)

All TreC+ features can be accessed both from the web portal (trec.trentinosalute.net) and from the app (downloadable free of charge from the main “Stores”) with two “strong” authentication methods: SPID (public digital identity system), the Trento Province Service Card (enabled health card inserted in the USB reader, which remains in use by those who already have it, but is no longer provided to new users) and soon also with the CIE (electronic identity card). The Security Card (table containing random numbers) has been dismissed.

By using the “strong” authentication method, you will be able to take advantage of all TreC+ features. By using a “less strong” authentication method (health card number+ Italian taxpayer code), you can only access some TreC+ functions, the same as they were previously in Fast TreC.

 

 


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