Master of Science Pietro Randine will Thursday May 30th, 2024, at 12:15 hold his disputas for the PhD degree in Science. The title of his thesis is:
"Dia-Continua: An Information System for Type 1 Diabetes Consultation. (Interoperability, Privacy, and Information Quality on a FHIR-Based Information System for Type 1 Diabetes Consultations based on Patient-Generated Health Data)"
Patient-generated health data (PGHD) is required to monitor chronic conditions like Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). This data includes information from medical devices like insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors and lifestyle insights from commercial wearables devices such as smartwatches. To improve the quality of medical consultations, we need a unified information system that can integrate PGHD. Designing such a system will pose several challenges. The system should be able to navigate through fragmented information and the complexities of various data formats, proprietary interfaces, and storage methods while ensuring robust security, privacy, and adherence to data ownership principles. It should also enable controlled data sharing with healthcare providers (HCPs) and external entities such as national registries and informal caregivers. This dissertation details designing, developing, and testing an information system for individuals with T1D. The project involved integrative research in health informatics, collaboration with international projects, and collaboration with experienced users and HCPs to address three research questions. These questions focused on interoperability, the security and privacy of the information collected, and the quality of the information presented during consultations. The result is Dia-Continua, a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based information system with a microservices architecture orchestrated through Kubernetes on an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform. The system integrates data from various diabetes management devices, questionnaires, and PGHD. Furthermore, using SMART on FHIR for authorization and authentication enables data sharing and reuse with national registries and informal caregivers. Eleven interviews with HCPs evaluated Dia-Continua's new functionalities and information quality. Despite the limitations due to proprietary device systems, the system was assessed positively by HCPs, highlighting the need for a system like Dia-Continua that includes physical activity, sleep, and stress in medical consultations. Dia-Continua is a significant step for a patient-centred model for consultations in T1D. Future work should expand the system's model to other chronic diseases.
The disputas and trial lecture will be streamed from these sites:
Disputas (12:15 - 15:00)
Trial Lecture (10:15 - 11:00)
The thesis is available at Munin here.