News

Cáritas Coimbra will participate in the plenary meeting of the ValueCare project. It was planned to take place in Athens – Greece, on the 23^rd and 24^th of March, but given the situation in which the country and the world find themselves, the consortium chose security and, alternatively, will meet by videoconference on the same days.

Despite the recent restrictions and constraints resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, the European ValueCare project remains in active operation, mobilizing efforts to adapt to the circumstances of the current context, in pursuit of the fruitful fulfilment of its objectives and tasks.

In this sense, the ValueCare consortium, composed of 17 partners from 8 European countries, under the coordination of Erasmus Medical Center (EMC), will bring together the perspectives of different actors in a plenary meeting. This meeting will focus, essentially, on communicating the project’s progress to date, as well as on the discussion and pursuit of the activities necessary for the development of an efficient model of integrated social and health care, aimed at improving the quality of life of elder people and their families, affected by cognitive decline, fragile/vulnerable conditions or multiple comorbidities.

In practice, this vision of integrated care (based on the benefit generated by them and on a methodology developed by the project partners, in collaboration with the project’s end users), will be applied in a robust, safe and scalable digital solution, tested and assessed through the implementation of 7 large-scale pilots in Europe, located in Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Holland and Ireland. Cáritas Coimbra will be responsible for the implementation of the large-scale pilot in Portugal, also participating in the ethical tasks that promote the trust of users and political leaders in relation to access, protection, sharing and standardization of personal data.

The production and implementation of an integrated care paradigm of this type aims to contribute to the efficiency and sustainability of the European social and health systems, as well as to the coordination, satisfaction and well-being of professionals working in these areas. This will bring significant potential of benefit for the entire chain of care provision for elder citizens, at social and “digital” health levels.