Meet the Leader from AIT!

In this interview, we meet Biomedical Informatician Günter Schreier from the Austrian Institute of Technology.

Why did you join PanCareSurPass?

We, at AIT, and me, personally, have been involved in these developments starting in 2010 with the ENCCA project, leading the IT workpackage. Since then, we bet on interoperability to make the SurPass a reality. With PanCareSurPass, finally, interoperability took center stage.

Explain your organization and your role in PanCareSurPass.

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest applied research institute with approx. 1.400 employees working in 8 centers. Its vision is to bridge the gap between basic research and applied science.

AIT’s Digital Health Information Systems (HIS) research team is part of the Centre for Health & Bioresources and has comprehensive experience in the design, development, evaluation and operation of patient centered, interoperable, privacy preserving, and predictive ICT solutions for healthcare and biomedical research.

Our role in PanCareSurPass is developing the architecture of the IT solution in Austria and to provide our EUPID Services to bridge the gap between healthcare and research.

Why do you think PanCareSurPass is an important project?

It is a frontline project pushing the future 4P healthcare paradigm, i.e., making healthcare:

• Participatory
  • Give patients a chance to take an active part in their health care.
• Personalized
  • Therapy adjusted to the particular needs of individual patients.
• Predictive
  • Predict situations with significant risk of negative health impact.
• Preventive
  • Intervene timely to avoid negative impacts.

What makes this project unique for you?

The consortium, i.e. a very good mixture of patient, healthcare and IT focused organizations and the focus to interoperability.

What do you hope this project will achieve?

Bridging the gap between Healthcare and Research – bringing these two domains a little bit closer to each other and speeding up the knowledge creation cycle to improve long-term follow-up of survivors.

What’s the biggest challenge for your organization in PanCareSurPass?

Finding the common denominator between the general solution / European standard approach and the specifics as needed for the Austrian situation – in particular, linking the SurPass to the Austrian Electronic Health Record (ELGA – ELectronische GesundheitsAkte).

What’s the most fun thing for you in PanCareSurPass?

To meet nice people. Unfortunately, there was quite limited opportunity for that up to now because of the pandemic – hope for the future!

What’s the most important benefit of your participation in PanCareSurPass?

It’s a game of:

• Give:
  • We provide our 20+ years of experience with IT solutions for multiple domains related to PanCareSurPass challenges like:
    • healthcare (Interoperability, Electronic Health Record),
    • Research (Registries, Pseudonymization, Record-linkage, …), and
    • Patient centered systems (electronic Patient Reported Outcome Measures, telehealth).
• and Take:
  • We enjoy interacting with an interdisciplinary group of experts (patient representatives, health professionals and IT & Interoperability partners).
  • We enjoy the opportunity to explore new ideas and to create new partnerships.