Official opening of the Control-Communication Center – 8th March, Vratsa, Bulgaria

The first of its kind Control-Communication Center in Bulgaria for the provision of teleassistance and telecare services to elderly people with chronic diseases and permanent disabilities was officially opened by the Deputy Director General of the Bulgarian Red Cross and Project Manager Dr. Nadezhda Todorovska and the Mayor of Vratsa Municipality Kalin Kamenov.

The innovative teleassistance and telecare services were launched in January 2022 and have so far included 240 users from the regions of Vratsa, Vidin and Montana, some of them living alone in small and remote settlements. They are provided through a unified system for remote monitoring of physiological parameters in real time, by trained staff and with the assistance of the teams of the 7 Home Care Centres located in the three districts. Through the provision of two types of personal devices in the homes of the users, it is possible to monitor pulse, saturation, temperature, blood pressure, ECG, activation of alarms in different situations, etc. The aim is to provide a timely response when an incident occurs in the user’s home, as well as when a deterioration in the user’s condition is detected.

The services are suitable for people over 50 years of age with chronic diseases requiring medical monitoring, people with permanent disabilities, as well as for elderly people living alone with limited access to medical care and social services. Within the project the number of users will reach 500 people living in the three districts.

The aim of the new service is to create a model for the effective management of chronic diseases, coordinated at community level to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and using the possibilities of modern information and communication technologies. The 7 Home Care Centres in the regions of Vratsa, Vidin and Montana have a crucial role as a link in this model in terms of the connection between the user and the other health care and social services structures.