Frequently Asked Questions

The Clinical Patient Management System, known as CPMS, is a secure web-based application to support European Reference Networks (ERNs) in the diagnosis and treatment of rare or low prevalence complex diseases or conditions across national borders.

CPMS incorporates robust level security, making it a secured web-based application. CPMS is hosted at Microsoft Azure in Germany, ensuring physical security of data. Transport between client computers and the server uses a high-graded encryption to secure transmission over the internet to consider the high sensitivity of medical data.

The CPMS can only be accessed by authorised users via the EU Login Authentication Service. In the login page the user will be requested to use their EU Login to access the CPMS.

To maximise your experience with CPMS, users are highly advised to use modern web-browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer (11.0). Please note that Safari and Microsoft Edge doesn’t yet support fully the video conference technology used in the CPMS.

Upon successful login to CPMS, navigate from the Global Dashboard to your ERN Dashboard. Choose 'ERN Preferences' from the side navigation menu. The Thematic Areas for the ERN are listed, allowing users to choose which Thematic Area they are interested in.

Navigate to the Centre Dashboard for your medical centre/hospital and click on the ‘Enrol Patient’ button.

Yes, all patients must give at least a consent for clinical care. The consent forms can be downloaded by clicking the ‘Download Consent Forms’ button located on the right hand side of the consent section. Three types of consents are available in the CPMS:

  • Consent for care; required for successful enrolment
  • Consent for ERN databases and registries
  • Consent to be contacted for research

CPMS has a consultation form divided into multiple sections to enable health professionals to record a wide range of demographic data and clinical terminologies. 15 coding and terminology systems have been used to build a generic consultation form as a standard data capture element for all ERNs.

For requests to have additional customisations to the form, please contact DG Sante Support team via Sante-ERN-CPMS-itsupport@ec.europa.eu.

Yes, from the 'Medical Documents' section in the consultation form, CPMS provides the ability to upload medical files as part of the consultation form.

Users can user the following options to upload files into CPMS:

  • Drag & Drop for small and medium sized files
  • FTP Batch upload for large files
  • IHE integration with IHE compliant hospitals using certain integration profiles

The following file formats can be uploaded to the CPMS:

 
Text txt
PDF  pdf 
Excel  xml, csv, xls, xlsx, xlsm 
PowerPoint  ppt, pptx, pptm 
Word  doc, docx, docm 
Open Doc  odt, ods, odp, odc, odi 
Image  dcm, jpg, jpeg, bmp, tiff, png 
Video  avi, flv, wmv, mov, mp4 
Audio  pcm, wav, ogg, flac, mp3 

 

Yes, CPMS has both Radiology and Pathology viewers that enable users to view medical images with no need to download images on your computer.

CPMS offers the possibility for health professionals to either invite experts from their ERN themselves or to seek assistance from the ERN Coordinator to assign a Panel Lead or/and invite expert per the thematic area of interest.

Yes, however this can only be done by an ERN Coordinator, they can invite experts from other ERNs as a guest into your panel.

Yes, CPMS provides the flexiblity to allow external health professionals to enrol patients into the CPMS.  A request must be submitted to the ERN Coordinator to authorize a particular user whose hospital isn't part of the ERN.

Yes, CPMS generates a downloadable PDF version of the Consultation Outcome that can be shared to point of care specialists or the patients themselves.

Yes, CPMS includes a Video Conferencing tool. This enables ERN experts to schedule meetings per each individual consultation request or to discuss multiple patients in Multi-disciplinary team type of meeting.

The minimum hardware required for video conference is to have a camera and microphone installed or built-in your device (e.g. Computer, Laptop). The IT department at your organisation should ensure the following requirements have been fulfilled:

A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls the incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules. TokBox, the CPMS video service provider, requires access to specific ports.

At a minimum the following requirements must be met:

  • Open TCP port 443
  • Whitelist the following domains: “*.tokbox.com”, and “*.opentok.com”

For the network bandwidth, we do recommend a minimum dedicated 350kb/s down per each downloaded stream, as well as 350kb/s up per uploaded stream to maintain a stable video connection.

Yes, however, if you are using Google Chrome or Mozzila Firefox, you will be directed to install a plug-in into your browser when using Share-Screen feature. Installing the plug-in will be once-off and will not take more than a few seconds on average then you may refresh your page.

When sharing your screen in CPMS video meeting, you may experience a tunnel view, or infinite-window effect. This will occur when you share the screen or browser that is displaying the active live session.

To avoid that effect, you can :

  1. Utilize a second monitor by running the software on one and sharing the second.
  2. Share an individual application rather than the entire screen.
  3. Share an individual tab or use a second browser to share information.