The 10 main Municipalities of Central Greece, which represent the capital of each one of the 10 counties in Greece and belonging to the Region of Central Greece, adopted in 2008 a strategy to unite their forces in order to adequately meet and serve local citizen and local authority needs.
The strategy adopted is a citizen/visitor – local authority centric strategy and is based on the communications, information, and infotainment industry. Knowing the costs involved, the driver of the strategy will be those local, national and European projects that target the same vision and scope and the cost provision of services to citizens for building the necessary infrastructure, operate it, maintain it and develop it.
For that purpose the decision was to establish a municipal enterprise owned equally by each one of the 10 municipalities in order to execute the strategy adopted and realize the common vision. The establishment was decided on 23rd January 2009 at a general plenary meeting with all Mayors present and in agreement. Thus the municipal enterprise “Digital Cities of Central Greece ” – (DCCG-CitiesNet) was born . Today the DCCG is the first Digital Community in Greece aiming to achieve the adopted strategy.
Aiming towards the Vision, the DCCG-Cities Net realized it by being a pioneer in using applied and new technologies based on the correct understanding of local needs, matching those with the existing and new means in order to continuously enjoy the services that can be offered through broadband, internet and other tele, IT, and data infrastructures.
In particular, the e-health centre of DCCG –Cities Net provides telehealth services and other e-care services to patients and people requiring social services. Novel personal health systems are being utilized, for the wireless transmission of vital signs to a web-based platform. Individual citizens are equipped with light-weight handheld devices and record their vital signs at home which will then be transferred (via the telehealth centre) to the regional hospital or health care providers over internet or GPRS for review and feedback by the experts. Through these Personal Health Systems and innovative types of telemedicine services, medical staff can monitor the health status of patients anywhere and anytime. The Telehealth Centre is located in the Municipality of Trikala, which run a local telehealth service already for 10 years,.
Furthermore, DCCG has participated in the following EU funded projects :
- Horizon 2020 IA Project “GATEKEEPER – Smart Living Homes: Whole Interventions Demonstrator for People at Health and Social Risks”
https://www.gatekeeper-project.eu/
GATEKEEPER is an European Multi Centric Large Scale Pilot on Smart Living Environments. The main objective is enabling the creation of a platform that connects healthcare providers, businesses, entrepreneurs, and elderly citizens and the communities they live in, in order to originate an open, trust-based arena for matching ideas, technologies, user needs and processes, aimed at ensuring healthier independent lives for the ageing populations.
GATEKEEPER will be embodied in an open source, European, standard-based, interoperable and secure framework available to all developers, for creating combined digital solutions for personalized early detection and interventions. The project will demonstrate its value by scaling up, during a 42-months work plan, towards the deployment of solutions that will involve ca 40.000 elderly citizens, supply and demand side (authorities, institutions, companies, associations, academies) in 8 regional communities, from 7 EU member states.
- Horizon 2020 IA Project “ACTIVAGE – ACTivating InnoVative IoT smart living environments for AGEing well”
http://www.activageproject.eu/
ACTIVAGE is an initiative that’s aims to create 7.000 ¨Smart Homes¨ as it focuses in meeting the challenges posed by the ageing of the population via solutions entailing the use of the Internet of Things in 9 different Pilot sites in 7 different European Countries.
The Pilot site of CitiesNet S.A, a Municipal Company of the cities of Central Greece aims in deploying 150 Smart Houses in 2018 and 2019 for the elderly that are beneficiaries of the “Help at Home” social care program in all 10 Municipalities that are members of CitiesΝet. DCCG is responsible for identifying the potential users, recruiting them, conducting the pilot as well as the evaluation and dissemination of the services.
- PSP-ICT Pilot A 2009 Project “RENEWING HEALTH – Regions of Europe Working Together for HEALTH”
http://www.renewinghealth.eu/
The project focused in exploring the context in which patients took vital measurements at home and send them via telemetry to the doctor or the hospital. A total of approximately 500 patients across Thessaly used the services of the program (diabetes, COPD patients, patients with chronic heart disease). DCCG was responsible for identifying the potential users, recruiting them, conducting the pilot as well as the evaluation and dissemination of the services.
- PSP- ICT Pilot A Project “UNITED FOR HEALTH”
http://www.united4health.eu
It is basically the continuation of the Renewing Health project with a focus on diabetes type 2. A total of 70 diabetic patients of the wider region of Thessaly takes measurements at home and does not need to move to an institution or hospital, but via telemetry sends the exam to the doctor. DCCG was responsible for identifying the potential users, recruiting them, conducting the pilot as well as the evaluation and dissemination of the services.