Harald Korb
CMO
Vitaphone GmbH
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Telemedicine is essential to National Health Strategies in the Management of Chronic Diseases - the example of cardiology
Prof Korb is deeply convinced that the future belongs to telemedical monitoring. "This specific technology considerably improves the therapy of chronically ill patients. It creates transparency, optimizes processes between health care providers, improves the patients' life quality and is economically reasonable. On the one hand, telemedicine thereby contributes a great deal to compensating for the growing financial challenges the healthcare system is faced with, resulting from demographic change. On the other hand it still allows for providing an individualized medical care at a high standard," outlines Prof Korb. "Although Germany is considered to be a developing nation in the telemedical area - for now, neither the healthcare system nor the sponsors, especially the health insurers, will be able to renounce from using and financing those innovative technologies, as it serves the common good and the chronically ill!"
The key element of all telemedical services is the telemedical service center, made up of a capable team of doctors and qualified assistance personnel being ready for service 24/7. The experienced and well-matched team oversees the telemedical monitoring, looks after patients, observes electronic patient records, collates medical results, evaluates electrocardiograms and other medical data and forwards them to the respective physicians, either in hospitals or surgeries. In an emergency case, the telemedical service center carries out a comprehensive emergency management. The position of Vitaphone GmbH is outstanding owing to the fact that the company's portfolio ranges from hardware and software development to system integration and complete services with a 24/365 telemedical service center to monitor chronically ill patients. These services are being distributed in over 20 countries worldwide and results are evaluated at a high scientific level.
The Vitaphone telemedical service center is the first one in Europe that has been recently certified by the VDE Testing & Certification Institute according to the guidelines of ISO 9001:2000 and the VDE utilization regulation.
As networking partner in the scope of "CorBene" - the first nationwide all-encompassing contract with integrated healthcare for patients with heart insufficiency - Vitaphone provides telemedical services. "CorBene" is a project of the BKK-association NRW. The contract includes 140 statutory health insurances with more than 3.5 million insured people. Under the supervision of Prof Korb, Vitaphone also participates in other projects that are supported by various different federal ministries - on the national level, as well as on the European level, in AAL-funded projects AMICA (Asthma/COPD) and "EMOTION-AAL" (Diabetes).
Harald Korb
Prof Dr med Harald Korb, born 18th February 1952 in Mainburg, Germany, has more than 8 years' experience in the monitoring of patients suffering from chronic diseases. He is considered to be a nationally as well as internationally accepted expert leading in the area of telemedicine.
After his habilitation in the subject area of physiology and pathophysiology, Prof Dr Korb worked as cardiac surgeon for various university hospitals and was soon appointed the position of the extracurricular professor at the University of Cologne in 1990.
In 2001 Prof Dr Korb joined Personal HealthCare Telemedicine Services GmbH (PHTS Telemedicine) in Düsseldorf, making his entry into the sector of telemedicine. He fostered the way for this particular discipline, which was quite young at that time, by means of diverse studies and projects. He set up a multitude of projects implementing telemedicine as an information and service platform in integrated care models with full reimbursement of service by insurance companies. After having achieved extremely positive evaluation results, the innovative care systematics could also be applied to diabetes.
Prof Korb has been awarded several national and international distinctions for his scientific papers, including his telemedical surveys. Prof Korb is a member of various national and international boards and scientific communities. He is involved in VDE Initiative Micro Medicine - as a panel member as well as a regular member of the "Task force Telemedicine/Disease management"; he is a chairman of "Project group for Quality management" and he is a member of "Project group Diabetes Telemonitoring". Furthermore, he is affiliated with the AAL program commission and was an active participant in the publication process of relevant VDE position papers. In addition to that Prof Korb brings another level of expertise deriving from his activities as chairman of the scientific council of the congress TeleHealth (Deutsche Messe AG, CEBIT, Hannover) and as member of the scientific council of Taunus BKK. Recently, Prof Korb was appointed vice president of the "German society for Health Telematics" (DGG) e.V.
Since September 2007, Prof Korb has been working as medical director for Vitaphone GmbH in Mannheim. Vitaphone GmbH is among the leading companies for integrated services in the telemedical sector and covers the whole spectrum from functional diagnostic medicine to modern therapy management of chronic diseases. Using advanced concepts to detect and transfer bio-signals by means of modern communication tools, which are embedded in telemedical monitoring and care systems, Vitaphone supports healthcare providers and sponsors; an ideal participatory supply strategy for the medical care of patients is provided by Vitaphone. By centering on the patient the overall focus automatically shifts towards an improvement of diagnostics and therapy, at the same time maximizing the efficiency in terms of health economics.
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