About IMCA
What is IMCA Group?
IMCA Group is an international network integrated by epidemiologists, public health specialists and clinicians interested on the epidemiology, clinical management and health care policy issues related to major chronic respiratory diseases.
The group was initially created to develop the project “Indicators for Monitoring COPD and asthma in the EU (IMCA I)” funded by the European Commission. The overall aim of the project was to get a consensus among clinicians and researchers in the field of respiratory diseases, representatives from international organizations (i.e. WHO Europe) and scientific societies (i.e. ERS and EACCI) on a proposal for a set of indicators to monitor COPD and asthma in al EU Member States.
The result of this project has contributed to the framework and proposals of the European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) project and to the proposals set up by DG-SANCO in the Public Health Programme (2003-2008) to build a “European System of Information and knowledge on Major Chronic Diseases”.
The funding of the new project IMCA II allowed us to expand the initial network with new partners from other countries and also is making possible the development new objectives focused on data collection and to the development of new technologies for monitoring chronic respiratory diseases.
News
September 2009: IMCA II poster presentations at the ERS Congress in Vienna
Three poster presentations on IMCA were made during the ERS congress in Vienna. The main results of the HES five feasibility studies implemented in IMCA II was named "Wireless mobile tehcnologies facilitates home-based data collection and processing in large epidemiological surveys: results from the IMCA-HES feasibility study". The second presentation was a local declination of the first one and put the emphasis of the specific results of the feasibility study carried out in the area of Pisa in Italy. The third presentation was named "Recommended and priority indicators for monitoring COPD and asthma in the European union: results from the IMCA I project". During this presentation, the it was explained that one of the outputs of the IMCA II project was actually the collection of indicators at national level on COPD and asthma in 25 EU countries following the recommendations made by the IMCA I project.
Additionally, the IMCA II partners present at the ERS Congress in Vienna met in a private meeting in order to discuss about the latest developmment of the project.
