Healthchain Stories: ESFERA

Healthchain
Stories

ESFERA
Connecting People, Data, and Care

The need

80% of medical consultations are related to chronic diseases, with the remaining 20% due to other pathologies. This directly impacts the saturation of Primary Care centers, which are mainly responsible for providing care to patients, monitoring their progress, leading to an increased workload for professionals in these centers. The main challenge was to personalize medical care for chronic conditions, with a focus on epilepsy and oncology for people dealing with chronic diseases.

The HealthChain Support

HealthChain supported Healthcare Organisations in identifying their innovation challenges and selecting companies to address them. They worked closely as an interregional team to co-create, test, and validate a solution aligned with real clinical workflows, patient needs, and organisational constraints. The project provided financial and business support to boost the solution’s market-readiness and commercialisation.

The
Solution

ESFERA is a digital solution focused on the accessibility and personalization of medical care for patients within the healthcare system. This solution is a holistic digital platform where patients, their stakeholders, and healthcare professionals share information through bidirectional communication. The solution is designed to optimize the follow-up of patients with chronic diseases, presenting a significant opportunity for the Autonomous Communities of Spain to improve their health systems.

The significance of ESFERA lies in its transformative impact on healthcare delivery. ESFERA represents a notorious advancement in managing chronic conditions by providing a unified platform that integrates essential functionalities such as real-time symptom tracking, medication management, PROMS and PREMS, forms, and remote consultations.

Impact

The pilot demonstrated that public health systems can adopt agile methodologies and digital solutions when governance and collaboration are strong.

Personalized Care: It facilitates bidirectional communication between patients, stakeholders (families), and healthcare professionals to improve disease prevention and self-management.
Patient Empowerment: The solution turns patients into “active elements” of their own health by providing tools for continuous monitoring and personalized follow-up.
Workflow Optimization: For professionals, it optimizes work time and accelerate response times by providing a consolidated “extra layer” that integrates with existing systems rather than replacing them.
Security and Reliability: Cybersecurity challenges led to the integration of enhanced security measures and continuous testing within the development workflow, improving system robustness and compliance but extending the overall timeline.

Outcomes

The solution was specifically piloted for patients with epilepsy and oncology. To support user onboarding and facilitate adaptation to the platform, comprehensive training materials were prepared.

A total of 32 users participated in the pilot, distributed across two specific use cases: epilepsy and oncology.
For epilepsy, 14 users were involved, including 1 administrator, 1 case manager, 1 healthcare professional, 6 patients, and 5 relatives.
For oncology, 18 users participated, comprising 1 administrator, 1 case manager, 3 healthcare professionals, and 13 patients.
The platform successfully facilitated bidirectional communication between patients, their families (stakeholders), and healthcare professionals

Sustainability

After the pilot phase, the goal was to identify a stable solution that the health system can adopt and integrate within the Murcia Health Service. Currently, a version of the solution is already in use, and the upcoming iteration will include enhancements and modifications to expand services, ensuring reliability and effectiveness in real-world healthcare environments.

It is also believed that it would be highly valuable to continue piloting the solution with additional use cases and a broader range of users, to validate all functionalities and explore the full potential of the platform to keep improving and adapting to users’ needs.

Testimonials

As IT companies, at HealthChain, we have experienced firsthand the true value of co-creating digital health solutions in close collaboration with healthcare professionals and patients. From the very early stages of the project, we have been able to validate real needs, align expectations, and develop technology that integrates seamlessly into clinical workflows. For us, working hand in hand with key stakeholders has been essential in transforming innovative ideas into solutions with a tangible impact on the Servicio Murciano de Salud.

The participation of the Murcia Health Service in the HealthChain project has been a valuable opportunity to explore new forms of collaboration between healthcare organizations, clinical teams, and technology entities. Although joint work is not without challenges, especially regarding time coordination, adaptation to shared methodologies, and the alignment of priorities among actors with very different realities, the experience has highlighted the practical value of these collaborative projects. Throughout the project, the collaborative approach facilitated by HealthChain has contributed to establishing a more direct dialogue between healthcare professionals and technology companies. This exchange, although sometimes complex, has allowed ideas to be compared, assumptions to be reviewed, and the development of solutions to be better oriented toward real clinical needs. The structure of the project has provided a useful framework to maintain continuous communication, gather practical feedback, and progress toward proposals that are better tailored to the care context. While there is still work to be done to fully integrate these innovations into daily practice and ensure their long-term sustainability, participation in HealthChain has helped reinforce the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration. At the Murcia Health Service, we value this experience as a significant step toward improving the relationship between the healthcare and technological environments, and toward continuing to develop solutions that, with time and joint effort, can translate into concrete benefits for both patients and professionals.