"Improving health-care services through innovative RO-HU surgical ideas"

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The project is designed around a solid RO-HU cross-border partnership between The Emergency County Hospital “Pius Brinzeu” of Timisoara as Lead Applicant and Szeged University as Partner Applicant, aiming at improving the living conditions of the population in the programme’s eligible area, namely in Timis, a Romanian county, and in Csongrad-Csanad, a county in Hungary.. The concept which formed the basis of the partnership derives from the fact that both public institutions can make an important and real contribution in achieving the proposed results. Therefore, both partners will develop, throughout the implementation of the project, the 2nd Surgery Clinic, the Oro-Maxillofacial Surgery Department and the Gynecological Department of the Lead Applicant and the Department of Surgery and the Oro-Maxillofacial Surgery Department of the Partner Applicant, completing in 5 health-care departments affected by modernized equipment and a number of 403,000 people having access to improved health service. The project addresses punctual common challenges with reference to certain situations in which both partners fail to meet patients' expectations at present, or, in respect of which, the procedural framework has been proved to be inadequate and, therefore, the intervention is required: 1. Health inequalities - local disadvantaged communities' reduced access to prevention, diagnosis and surgical treatment of oncology; 2. Insufficient technical equipment; 3. Non-specialized human resources; 4. Insufficient cross-border cooperation; The project`s approach in addressing these common challenges: 1. Since malignant tumors have the 2nd highest mortality in the general population of Hungary, while head and neck cancers (HNCs) stand at 4-6th, taking all ontological cases into account, and the Hungarian and Romanian populations show the worst statistic regarding HNCs, being 1st and 3rd on the list, available, free of charge minimally invasive surgical interventions will contribute to equalizing major service level imbalances, since, due to the finance of the project proposal, appropriate level of services will be available for patients across the eligible area, especially for disadvantaged groups. 2. The HU part is interested in developing robotic surgery procedures, while, for the RO part, the development of endocrine and HBP surgery and microsurgical techniques are desirable. All mentioned above procedures require surgical education and skill departments with state-of-the-art technological infrastructure. The proposed health care investments will lead, firstly, to the improvement of the quality of the medical act and of the surgical results, by increasing the patient's safety, and, also, of the quality of the patient postoperative life, the widening of the range of interventions according to the identified need in the area, lower costs of use per patient, lower energy consumption, eventually leading to unloading current pressure on public units services. 3.& 4. Because of infrastructural and human resources limitations, the health centers are overwhelmed. The postgraduate education shows its limitations and inadequacies as well, since real professional skills training, cadaver courses and minimally invasive and microsurgical trainings are of limited availability in both counties. Via the Interreg RO-HU programme, cross-border professionals will establish a solid partnership in order to obtain skills in specific microsurgical and minimally invasive surgical techniques from a joint interdisciplinary medical expert team, in state-of-the-art equipped departments. Common challenges cannot be efficiently addressed acting individually on a local level because, only through a solid corss-border RO-HU partnership, quality measures of care may be provided. The Emergency County Hospital “Pius Brinzeu” of Timisoara is one of the centers of excellence in the treatment of malignant neoplasm through the instrumentality use of robotic techniques, while the Surgery department of Szeged University has a limited experience in such procedures. On the other hand, interdisciplinary complex treatment through microsurgical techniques takes place in facilities of the highest level of progressive care in Csongrad-Csanad. The capacities of these facilities in the southern region of Hungary are further burdened by the fact that a large number of Romanian citizens are arriving here, as the treatment of advanced cases in Romania is currently unresolved. The main overall objective of the project: Improved health-care services at local and regional level of RO-HU through coordinated development of health care equipment and services, an estabilshed solid cross-border partnership by setting up a joint interdisciplinary medical expert team and facilitated easier and quicker accessibility of medical services in the eligible area. ​The project's main outputs clearly link to Ip9/a output indicator, as follows: 1. population having access to measures of prevention, early identification and effective treatment of cancer: 403,000 people including disadvantaged people, representing 66.47% of the target value under this call, out of which: a) 250 disadvantaged people in need for minimally invasive surgical procedures; b) 3,000 people from the eligible cross-border area population, with specific symptomatology of the medical specialities participating in the project, especially disadvantaged people that rarely, if ever, benefit from screening and medical diagnose because of the afferent cost; c) 400,000 people from the eligible cross-border area population benefiting from the information disseminated through the 4 awareness campaigns; 2. Number of health-care departments affected by modernized equipment: 5 departments representing 83.33% of the target value under this call.   The following concrete measures will ensure and strengthen the durability of the project`s outputs and results, both partners being responsible for achievieng the proposed outcome: a) The online instruments will continue to function, maintaining their atributes on the steps to follow for a full diagnose, recommendations for specific healthcare institutions based on the location of the patient, information and medical history exchange, knowledge transfer/acquire etc. resulting in an expected number of 275,000 persons and 1,000 trainees benefiting from the durability of the project`s outputs. b) Free of charge minimally invasive surgical procedures will continue to be provided for a minimum of 100 patients/ year cross-border, for 5 years after the implementation period.

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