iWebCare FP6-2004-IST-4-28055

Integrated Web Services Platform for the facilitation of fraud detection in health care e-government services

iWebCare, which kicked off in January 2006, is a 3-year €2,3 million project co-financed by the European Commission’s IST/FP6 program.  The project aims to design and develop a flexible fraud detection web services platform with embedded advanced ICT tools, applying data mining and self-learning algorithms on existing transactions and records, which will be able to support e-government processes by identifying irregular behavior and accurately assessing it. 

iWebCare will design, implement and test a fraud detection engine that will process all fraud detection related requests and implement a self learning module that will be able to learn new rules from submitted clean or fraudulent data and properly update the central rules repository (active learning strategies). The core idea of iWebCare is to elaborate a complete business process methodology for e-government services, customizable to a variety of domains such as healthcare, taxation, eProcurement, Immigration security, etc. The European scope of the platform will be tested during the project in real conditions through its deployment in two different countries (Greece and UK) and will serve as a hands-on test of its feasibility and applicability. The two pilots will be in the healthcare domain ensuring quality and accuracy and minimizing loss of health care funds.

According to the Counter Fraud Service of the UK’s National Health System, EU expenditure on public healthcare is estimated to be €1 trillion per year. Fraud accounts for almost 3% of public healthcare expenditures in the UK and 3% to 10% of annual expenditures (private and public) in the USA. The UK experience has demonstrated the economic impact of fighting fraud: since the set-up of the Counter Fraud Service, losses due to fraudulent cases fell by about 45%. Use of the iWebCare tools, as part of a complete policy for combating fraud could lead to results of a similar magnitude. The importance of fighting fraud becomes more evident in the light of increasing expenditure on health.  Demographic projections particularly for the age composition of the population, indicate that by 2050 public expenditure on healthcare in the EU will be between 6% and 7.6% of GDP.

The iWebCare consortium of 8 partners from 6 countries is led by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems  – Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (ICCS-BEL), Greece, and consists of the following partners: Agilis SA - Statistics & Informatics (Agilis), Greece, Social Security Body Of Health Professionals (TSAY), Greece, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V (FhG) for its Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS), Germany, Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust, United Kingdom, Intrasoft International, Belgium, Dipartimento di Matematica e Statistica, Universitá degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UniNa), Italy and Comemenius University – Faculty of Management (FMCU), Slovakia.

iWebCare will help organizations to decrease financial losses from fraud because they will be able to use new fraud methodologies to identify potential fraud cases faster and establish policies to neutralize them, while isolating cases for investigation. The iWebCare platform and tools will ensure homogeneity and consistency in fraud detection, while promoting awareness and harmonization of fraud detection practices among health care systems in the EU. iWebCare’s flexible approach will make it applicable in the broader e-Government sector.