In this interview, we meet Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez, digital health expert, and Gerald Gredinger, health expert, from Gesundheit Österreich GmbH in Austria.
Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez
Gerald Gredinger
Why did you join PanCareSurPass?
Alexander: I am passionate about the challenge of finding suitable digital tools to support care processes and incorporate them into healthcare infrastructures.
Gerald:I perceive it as a great opportunity to accompany the whole implementation process of the PanCareSurPass from the idea to the actual operationalization.
You lead WP5 – tell us about it!
Our work package looks at the PanCareSurPass from a health economic perspective. We try to gather evidence on the costs and benefits of introducing the SurPass 2.0 into different environments. Ultimately, this should help health policy-makers and managers in deciding whether and how to embark on the SurPass 2.0 journey.
Why do you think PanCareSurPass is an important project?
PanCareSurPass helps in ensuring that childhood cancer survivors can get the best possible follow-up care, regardless of where in Europe they are. This is also an important blueprint for advancing the digitally supported and guidelines-based care for patients with other long-term or chronic conditions.
What makes this project unique for you?
One thing that is very unique in this project is the blend of partners: from oncologists to health IT experts, from patient representatives to policy-makers.
What do you hope this project will achieve?
We hope the project will manage to kick-start the rollout of the SurPass 2.0 in a small group of frontrunner countries.
What’s the biggest challenge in your WP?
Getting reliable and valid data to assess effectiveness and outcomes of the SurPass 2.0 intervention.
What’s the most fun thing in your WP?
The challenge to understand the various settings the SurPass 2.0 can be deployed in: digging deep into information on the various regional and national health systems and eHealth infrastructures as well as to understand the installation of the actual technical environment.
What’s the most important benefit of your WP for survivors?
We support transparency with regard to the cost and benefit of SurPass 2.0 empowered follow-up care. On this basis, decision-makers are able to understand the requirements for taking part in the SurPass 2.0 and compare it to the benefits.
What else do we need to know about your WP or is there anything else you want to share?
In our WP, you need to be passionate about fine-grained health economic data as well as able to zoom out and build a meta-level understanding of health systems and eHealth infrastructures.
They will be asked to complete questionnaires in order to ‘measure’ the impact we want to achieve. I am sure they will collaborate as they have always done in the so many other projects we have made together.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 899999. The material presented and views expressed here are the responsibilities of the author(s) only. The EU Commission takes no responsibility for any use made of the information set out.