The economic model E-DIMEM (Electronic DIsease Management Economic Model) applies an activity-based costing methodology which considers the healthcare consumer embbeded in her/his healthcare environment where some processes and their subprocesses evolve. For each process costs and earnings are calculated. Such a model allows us to calculate the costs related to a medical protocol . As well known a protocol is a plan or outline of a scientific experiment, treatment or study. We intend it as a therapeutic-diagnostic path connected to a certain pathology, developed within a virtual healthcare system, made up of a virtual system of healthcare structures (hospitals, doctor's consulting room, etc) and the patient's home. Our analysis considers the cost of a protocol for such virtual systems as the sum of the costs of various procedures, therapies, and medications contained in the protocol .

The software that implements E-DIMEM is able to find out the costs of each phase of the single medical protocol, to process the total cost and to compare it with other alternative ones pointing out its benefits in economic terms. The advantage of this system lies in the fact that every reengineering decision can be isolated and evaluated in accordance with its impact on the other single activities. For instance, an investment in ICT can determine a shorter time needed in the development of a certain activity resulting in a minor use of resources and therefore minor costs.

Client : CNR-Italy, the National Research Council.

Activity description : Overall realization and exclusive maintenance.

Environments/Tools used : Browser, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, DHTML.

Skills/Roles : Project manager, analyst, software architect, programmer.