G-MAC: Information System based on Conceptual Models for the Effective and Efficient Management of Data associated with Retinal-Macula Pathology
Macular diseases, such as AMD, pose a challenge due to the high probability that people over the age of 50 have of suffering from this abnormality. Until recently, there was no effective treatment for this disease. Thanks to medical advances in this area, the risk of progression of this disease can be reduced, however, the use of certain drugs comes at a very high cost. As a consequence, professionals in the Ophthalmology sector have recognized this problem and seek to reduce these costs through the use of new Information Systems (IS) that allow the correct and accurate management of the treatment and evolution of patients suffering from this type of disease, which would allow avoiding or controlling large economic losses through an IS that helps in the decision-making process in the clinical environment. To date, the experts of the Ophthalmology Services (SO) of the different hospitals of the Ministry of Health do not have any support tool that allows them to carry out a correct management of the information. For this reason, there is a high dispersion of information, due to the use of files and documents in different formats to manage patient data and treatment. Currently, there is only one program worldwide, called FRB or Project ¿Fight Retinal Blindness!¿, whose license per hospital costs 30,000 euros, has limited access and is not easily accessible.
This program allows you to follow the patient’s process and generate graphs that help to obtain a better diagnosis. The UPV has proposed developing a software application for the analysis and management of data from patients treated for macular pathology in the Ophthalmology Services of the Ministry of Health. This solution seeks to respond to the needs of clinicians, providing them with a tool that fAs for the only possible solution on the market, FRB is very unaffordable for hospitals due to its high cost (30,000 ¿). The UPV’s proposal allows the same functions to be carried out without the need to invest such an amount of money. This Web application can be run in any browser (Chrome, Mozilla, Explorer) from the Windows, Linux or Mac OS operating system. From the Android Operating System it is not recommended to use it, due to the small screen size available. It does not require a high consumption of resources (RAM, etc.)acilitates better patient monitoring and diagnosis. Unlike the traditional methodology used by experts in Ophthalmology, this solution allows the management of patient treatment information to be carried out in a simple, organized and secure way.