European approach, Standardization and Interoperability .Taking in strong consideration the fact that the first priority for this project is the direct involvement of end-users (patients and doctors), PSYCHE consortium was built according to a well planned structure that has proven to be valid in other International projects with similar objectives.

The consortium structure will give the possibility to really take into account end-users’ needs at the beginning of the project and test and validate the products in different contexts at its end. This will also guarantee repeatability in other countries in a future step.

Partners can be classified according to three different participant categories/functions:

1 Scientific Organizations (that will contribute to standard definition in the socio-sanitary environment, to the analysis of the technology state-of-the-art and to the application of most recent research results);

2 Health Organizations (regional/local organisations that will contribute to the definition of system requirements and users’ needs, to the architecture design and particularly will take an active role in the demonstration phase);

3 Technical companies (technology providers/developers responsible for the technical choice to realise the specific functionalities required by the project proposed from the other partners).

The combination of the experiences of partners coming from different fields (industrial world, research centres etc.) but having a strong background in the Health care sector is a key factor of the project. In fact most of the partners have already been involved in prominent European Project aiming to the development of systems for a new concept of the Healthcare. PSYCHE project will enhance the leadership of Europe in the Personal Health System area broadening the application field of the new technologies by introducing innovative tools as well a revolutionary approach to manage mental disease allowing to meet the need of sectors of the healthcare that have not been covered by the applications developed up until now in the context of the European Research. A high level of Interoperability has been foreseen in order to match the solutions that will be developed in the PSYCHE project with the systems present in the state of the art.

To assure usability and potential exploitation of results in different national contexts, the project requires, on one side, a European approach, on the other the use of international health care standards. National differences will then concern only the nationalization of the platform in linguistic terms. The system will be realized taking great care of health model of the partner countries, and the application will be translated in different languages: Italian, English and French in order to be compliant to the sanitary guidelines and organizational models of the countries involved.

In addition to the existing standards, PSYCHE application will be based also on new standards for the most innovative solution proposed in the frame of the project such as the textile interfaces, the
interconnection textile compatible solutions (bus and connectors), the new packaging of the electronics to be embedded in the textile interface.

One of the objectives of the PSYCHE project is a seamless communication of health data between the clinicians as well as the patients by relying on the ICT solutions envisaged in the project and guaranteeing at the same time the security standard for the foreseen applications (i.e. WEB platform). Interoperability aspects will be considered taking into account the different sources of data and the different platforms that will be implemented for gathering them (EEG systems, portable devices etc).

Another remarkable aspect of PSYCHE project is that will allow us to have a significant and valuable clinical and social information repository about patients suffering from bipolar disorders.

Moreover, the project is expected to deliver a new body of knowledge about the treatment of bipolar disorders that will be disseminated and discussed in addition to the traditional channels (papers, conferences etc) by using an on-line web2.0 community.