Social health care paths

The NIHMP aims at providing more than just medical services for socially and economically disadvantaged population groups. By offering comprehensive services to those people who are often excluded, the NIHMP started a series of projects aimed at  creating of social health care paths which integrate the health care services successfully provided by the outpatient department. A cooperation agreement was signed between the Institute and the Italian Ministry of Health (Directorate General for Medicines and Medical Devices of the Department for the National Health System Planning and Regulation) for a number of projects aimed at distributing tailored medical devices among vulnerable groups in the fields of dermatology, ophthalmology, dentistry, otolaryngology, hepatology and infectious diseases. Moreover, by providing data on medical devices use, these projects intend to offer effective technical and scientific support to the Ministry of Health for the evaluation of medical devices utilization and health status of vulnerable population groups before and after the medical device provision. The goal is thus to promote a more appropriate use of the resources of the National Health Service, by offering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and, when possible, using state of the art technologies.