One of Martin’s many projects was the vision of a digital health platform and in 2015 the EmERGE project was started under a five year HORIZON 2020 funded project www.emergeproject.eu. Conceived by Professor Martin Fisher and completed by the EmERGE team who are proud to have brought it to fruition in his memory.
The team have co-designed, developed, integrated and evaluated a digital health platform for people living with HIV. The platform provides individuals secure access to results, appointments and medication information, whilst ensuring that communication with clinical services is maintained.
Over 2251 people living with HIV across 5 different clinical settings in Europe participated in the evaluation of the platform, with follow up from 12 to 30 months. The results are being prepared for publication but show that it is a safe and effective method of communication allowing people to reduce the number of times they need to attend services and clinics to be able to manage capacity more efficiently. The platform has been fully operational since 2017.
As the project was drawing to a close, the world has experienced a COVID-19 pandemic forcing many countries into lockdown and disrupting face to face services. The EmERGE platform offers a secure, trusted and proven option from which evidence has been generated in a ‘real world setting’. Now is the time to move into digital health pathways.
The EmERGE project consortium has chosen to take a values-based not for profit strategy to ensure that the EmERGE platform can be provided sustainably to existing and new sites beyond the project and that we can continue to learn and adapt from its use. Working with stakeholders and our communities EmERGE mHealth Ltd will continue to take Martin’s legacy forward. If you are interested in finding out more please contact Steve Beaumont via [email protected]
