ELSAG - EL (Principal Contractor - Italy)     Contact person for the project: Dr. Claudio Buselli     The role of ELSAG in the Consortium is both to offer the technical expertise required for the development of the business validation model and to define the project exploitation plan toghether with TSD. - Elsag, offering a telematic portals for the healthcare market, will be the main responsible partner in WP6 T6.1, specifically to develop a WWW internet site to distribute on the WEB the developed protocols and tools in a "shareware form" to the end users. - In practical terms, this means that the user will be enabled to download the training tool and the freely test its effectiveness. Subsequently, should the user be interested - after the trial - in the tool, he will be enabled to pay for a fee it which will entitle him to receive the full training package. Of course this tools and protocols distribution will take place in time after the final development of the demonstrators. - Elsag will in particular contribute to and set-up a business validation model of such WEB centred part service of the VEPSY project. Elsag S.p.A established on November 1st 1998 was formerly a Division of Elsag Bailey, a Finmeccanica Company, one of the largest Italian industrial group. With revenues of about $370m in 1998 and more than 2,500 employees, Elsag S.p.A. group is now one of Italy's leading suppliers of IT solutions and services. Elsag SpA has a tradition of prestige, an excellent track record and numerous success stories. An ongoing quest for the best production solutions and a history of proven technology development and selection capabilities are applied to creating innovation and contributing to its customers' competitive edge.   This puts Elsag in a position to offer a complete range of IT solutions and       services, from process analysis to system maintenance and evolutionary management. Elsag's mission is to satisfy the business needs of large companies and organizations by designing, implementing and managing information technology solutions and services. This enables its customers to concentrate on their core businesses and helps them improve the performance and quality of products and services offered. Elsag key offer areas include: - Projects & system integration, professional services, distributed networked systems, tracking and tracing, MIS (Management Information System), document intensive systems, marketing & sales automation. These activities involve integration planning and management for hardware and software components to support its customers' business goals. Services include heterogeneous multivendor system integration and set up, including user training and project management - Life Cycle Services: information systems outsourcing (data center, distributed systems, TLC networks) and business process outsourcing (human resources & administration outsourcing, specialized logistic processes); system maintenance and evolutionary management (installation, consulting, maintenance, logistic management, customer care, field services) - Satellite telecommunication services and value added network services, electronic commerce services, hybrid mail services - Technologies: postal mechanization systems, intelligent character recognition, radio devices. Elsag bases its Customer relationships on these three guidelines: - Service-oriented culture involving maximum attention to customer needs and satisfaction - Applications customization - Continuous support and partnership with selected customers. Elsag's customers represent a wide range of vertical markets: manufacturing, banking and finance, public and private services, postal services. R&D As regards joint R & D projects, Elsag was prime contractor of Esprit's Project 940 "Depth and Motion Analysis", and participated in a number of other Esprit projects, like MUMP ("MUlti Methods Planner"), VOILA ("Variable Object Identification, Location and Acquisition"), DIMUS ("Data Integration in Multisensor Systems"). Moreover, Elsag was: Prime Contractor of the Research Program on Technologies for Bioelectronics (Theme 2), funded by the Italian Ministry for University and for Scientific and Technological Research, concerning simulation and testing of Neural Network solutions to a large variety of application problems; and Prime Contractor in PULSAR, a HPCN subproject of EUROPORT-2, which implemented a portable parallel package for remote sensing image applications. The company has been partner of CAPE2000, a project of the Telematics programme in association with a consortium of European Postal Administrations, for providing innovative multimedia services to the public and to large clients. Elsag is currently working as CO (co-ordinator) in ESPRIT project N. 24977, STRETCH ("STorage and RETrieval by Content of imaged documents") which is in the middle of its development. The aim of STRETCH is to develop a pre-production prototype of a system capable of storing and retrieving imaged multimedia documents in document bases ("Docu-bases"), by applying advanced techniques derived from Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition.The main pilot concerns an invoice archive. Elsag is also working in BIDSAVER "Business Integrator Dynamic Support Agents for Virtual Enterprise" project, in HEAVEN "Healther Environment through Abatement Emissions and Noise" project, in PROMOTE "Process Improvement through Measurements of Test Activities" project, in TWO "Test and Warning Office" project, in EQCSPOT "European Quantum Cryptography and Single Photon Optical Technologies" project. Finally Elsag is CO of the Italian PROGRAMMA NAZIONALE DI RICERCA PER LA MICROELETTRONICA E LA BIOELETTRONICA - Tema 5 - "Sistemi neuronali nell'automazione di servizi e di impianti" (Neural systems for service and plant automation), a large national research program funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, lasting 36 months (starting fall 1999), with partners both from industry and academia.