TSFR is involved in the Health field; the core of his work is technology transfer from research to patient care.

At the present state a link between technology and Health system is a precise need to be satisfied in a short period of time in order to avoid further expensive fitting. The way in wich we intend to create such a link could be used as a useful test stand for the development of a modern process of Information Technology, demonstrating how advanced information technologies could be useful in the territory diagnosis stage and in the quick identification of the right solutions that come from real time problems.

This precise moment in the medicine history is one of the most fertile and lively from the point of view of research and theory, thanks to the evolution of the Socio-sanitary System and the largest accessibility of communication and diagnosis technologies.

In that environment TSFR ’s primary task is to point out a whole of efficient solutions and technologies starting from the knowledge acquired by the international scientific community, trough a proposal of systems and services suitable for a better answer to new needs of new relationship between doctor, patient and family. If in some point physicians, physics, research chemists, engineers studied deeply specific situations due to their specific fields, at the present state there isn’t a clear definition for the Personal Health care appreciated by everybody, even if there are some common guiding lines. They didn’t found an interdisciplinary solution or a common vision yet. International health system is a very complex whole composed by every single national health system that depends on habits, customs, laws and civilization degree of each country; is for this reason that to found out new solutions for a better quality of life trough new technologies required to pick out the precise structure and characteristics of the specific territory and avail oneself of newest knowledge instruments. Results had to be reassembled in order to improve the research system in a whole. The environment industry are involved with is very complex and determined a market characterized by a constant growth in competition and great spread of technologies.

Systems Biology

TSFR supports researchers interested in Systems Biology through computational tools and modeling expertise, with particular attention to the following activities:

  • System Structure Identification: both the topological relationship ofthe network of components as well as parameters for each relation need to be identified

  • System Behavior Analysis: Such an analysis not only reveals system-level characteristics, but also provides important insights for medical treatments by discovering cell response to certain chemicals so that the effects can be maximized while lowering possible side effects

  • System Control: In order to apply the insights obtained by system structure and behavior understanding, research into establishing a method to control the state of biological systems is needed.

  • System Design: Ultimately, we would like to establish technologies that allow us to design biological systems with the aim of  understand mechanism of interaction.

Home Care

All recent regulations and guidelines suggest as a topic of great importance to the management of the patient at home, both in terms of assistance in terms of discharge from the hospital protected. Here, then, that the technological challenge is added to the socio-health: the responsibility of the patient is in fact increasingly shared by the hospital with the family.

The “home care” can be divided into “integrated home care” (ADI) and “home hospitalization” (OD). Both types may be indicated for patients “chronically critical.”

The first is consistent with the current laws and health is the subject of specific policy initiatives contained in the Health Plans of different regions. It is emphasized the need in some specific diseases, chronic degenerative and debilitating, especially in people ultrasessantacinquenni, involving repeated hospitalizations and frequent among these such as chronic obstructive pulmonary el’Insufficienza Respiratory, diseases of high epidemiological relevance. L ‘OD instead is the transfer of the patient at home to a level of care (diagnostic, evaluative, therapeutic and rehabilitative) available in hospitals. E ‘is particularly indicated for patients with chronic diseases, which have reached a high level of disability, level of complexity and instability of the patients more candidates for the ADI, and that might require technological support “quoad vitam” (that is essential for survival such as pulmonary ventilation). The legislative references are more limited than those reported accession: the Document of the hospitalization Domiciliare the Ministry of Health (DM 12/4/2002), and little else, where it briefly mentions the need to establish standards, procedures , payment methods and clinical departments at which enable teams of OD). So we are in the study phase of testing prior to OD.

Farnia may be the engineering partner for the clinical reality health who want to start the process of home care or to discharge protected.

Based on the foregoing considerations in pilot projects under way with the Forlanini Hospital in Rome, with the Istituto Superiore di Sanita, the University “La Sapienza” University of Lecce, Farnia is booming, and study to operate in a particularly dynamic Health.
The future “extended area”, consisting of ward, day hospital and home of the patient, must take into account the presence of many actors (doctors, engineers, families) who contribute to the functioning of the department itself: all’integrabilità technology must therefore also be supported the functional integration of the typical highly multidisciplinary contexts.
While from a medical-scientific at this point one begins to glimpse the evolution of the concept of home care, the large industrial realities are still under observation, while concentrating efforts and investments not just become more consolidated targets and protocols. OD initiatives that may have therefore undertaken an experimental value.

FUSION

FUSION – Framework and Unified System for Investigation On Neurosciences – is a hardware and software platform specificallydesigned and dedicated to collect, integrate, develop, manage and provide data and metadata generated in a laboratory of modern imaging.The system is optimized for clinical research and basic functions ofthe human brain from capture to finish.
Designed and validated in the operational context of Magnetic Resonance Laboratory for Brain Investigation of Fermi Center and Neuroimaging Laboratory of the Saint Lucia Foundation in Rome, several interesting aspects of technological innovation achieved, including the creation of an integrated multi-modal analysis with a repository that allows intelligent maintenance of all this information at every step of processing from raw data to final result.
FUSION combines in a single solution, the following components:

  • A DICOM server DICOM 3.0 compliant Open Source (Conquest)

  • A PACS server Open Source (Conquest)

  • An EEG loader EDF (European Data Format) compliant

  • A-DICOM converter Nifti

  • A classifier of sequences DICOM

  • A processing module consists of several components: Loni pipeline server (open source application) integrated with the main SW-processing (Matlab, FSL, hafnium ..) and configurable grid on open source (sun grid engine), a service for ‘execution of processes and a’ Purge ‘for the abolition of automatic processing dated

  • A-G Web server backend of Labview

  • A Web server front end that uses the open source Apache 2.2 HTTP server, OpenSSL and PHP to generate the web interface users encrypted

therefore:

interfaces to biomedical DICOM and EDF (CT MRI, PET and CT, Electro);

  • makes available the raw data just acquired, classified by type, in a hierarchy-oriented research to users, also in interchange Nifti suitable for use by the main analysis software;

  • allows processing of data and robust with adequate benefits, through an approach to grid computing;

  • provides a simple and user access via secure web based interface, integrated with secure authentication methods and standards.

  • FUSION can develop for a specific subject of the data protocols of multi clinical use, is applied to the isolated longitudinal and the execution of the same survey at different times. Similarly, you can manage protocols to support the statistical study of the function or morphology of the brain at very large groups of healthy subjects or patients suffering from neurological or psychiatric disorders. The platform lends itself well to longitudinal monitoring of clinical trials for the development of new treatments or new drugs, thanks to the web tool that allow the coordination and collaboration between different research centers, through the exchange of information and data on encrypted channels .