 Woman II Project
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The Woman II Objectives
Author:
Dr. D. Majidi
Computer Scientist - Project Manager
Last Review: 21/02/2003
The main objective of the WOMAN II project
is the improvement of every day clinical practice in the menopause
centres by optimising effectiveness, quality and continuity
of care and by offering informative services to women and health
professionals. The aim of this new WOMAN II trial take-up action,
is to rapidly enlarge the number of the existing validation
sites (currently Pisa, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Napoli) in order
to create a real "working" European network for a homogeneous
data collection and elaboration and to promote the usage of
the multilingual web portal among citizens and health professionals.
In detail the objectives of WOMAN II project are to:
- assess
the WOMAN services and applications against an enlarged
number of actors in new validation sites distributed over
the European Union and 3rd countries;
- to
promote the usage of web technologies both to women and
health professionals to offer continuing education;
- to
create women focus groups to validate the WOMAN results;
- to
keep up-to-date the Web site (www.womanlab.com);
- to
produce multilingual contents for the existing artifacts
(information, services and applications are currently available
only in English, Italian, Dutch and Spanish);
- to
integrate a network of competences, including expert epidemiologists,
GPs and Gynecologists to straighten the partnership and
ensure an appropriate collection of significant data;
- to
start-up an International Steering Board in collaboration
with European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS);
- to
carry on the dissemination of the achievements of the project;
- to
create statistically significant databases for research,
scientific and economical evaluation studies.
Following the 'Petal' model suggested by the European Commission,
that identifies citizens, patients and health professionals
as main actors of the healthcare domain, the following WOMAN
users have been identified: women, health professionals in the
menopause centres, GPs and gynaecologists. In WOMAN-II the role
of women, GPs and gynaecologists is well defined:
- Women:
each centre has to select and coordinate a women focus group
who will actively participated in the WOMAN services definition
and testing, in the web site content translation, and who
will validate and demonstrate the WOMAN results.
- Gynaecologists
and GPs: each centre has to select a number of
GPs and Gynaecologists who will be involved to validate
the WOMAN services (EPR, Online consulting, web portal services).
The created protocols and telematic services, can easily be
enlarged to the whole female population. So starting from a
subset of the woman health field, the consortium future aim
is to create an integrated network and accepted protocols for
all the peculiar female periods of life (adolescence, pregnancy,
fertility/infertility,..). The steps foreseen in WOMAN-II are:
- Set
Up Trial Scenarios (WOMAN EPR and services installation
at all sites, WOMAN Local Web Sites Customizations)
- Measurements
and Validation (Fine tuning of WOMAN existing Validation
Plan, WOMAN Validation)
- Assessments
(EPR fine tuning, Local sites fine tuning, Global site fine
tuning: Contents, Language, Services), Multilingual Translation
(EPR Translation, Global Site Translation, Local Sites Translation)
- Demonstration
( Demonstration of EPR at local sites, Demonstration of
EPR between cross sites, Demonstration of WOMAN site services)
- Dissemination
(Involvement of new centers, Investigating market opportunity,
Market validation exercises and trials, Business planning
for the deployment phase). WOMAN-II will create a network
of experts working together using web technologies, will
allow European women and professionals to find high quality
and approved content in their own idiom, will allow the
SMEs involved in the project to achieve an international
acknowledgement and exploit the results in the EU market.
Concluding, the technical target of the project is the validation
of the WOMAN results at an European level, the business
target is to overcome the commercial exploitation barriers.
| Table
I: Menopause Factors Affecting Quality of Life |
- vasomotor
and sleep disturbances
- psychological
and emotional stress
- genitourinary
and sexual complaints
- osteoporosis
: backache, fractures
|
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