“The conference is the continuation of a tradition of annual ministerial or high-level events. These conferences enable the demonstration of contemporary achievements in eHealth and the set-up of guidelines for future efforts so as to ensure the efficient use of information and telecommunication solutions in healthcare.
eHealth has enabled a tremendous development of healthcare systems over the last few years. It has already brought many opportunities to raise the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. It provides a greater efficiency of services which, in today’s era of considerable expectations on the part of every citizen, combined with limited financial resources in the system, has become among the most important goals of healthcare. With the help of information and telecommunication technologies we are introducing new ways to provide medical treatment, ease communications between citizens and healthcare providers, simplify procedures, ensure mechanisms for reducing errors, encourage individuals to manage their own health and, finally, provide data for the management both of risks and healthcare systems.”
The conference web site can be found here:
http://www.ehealth2008.si/
What came out of the full 2 day meeting was the following declaration.
The Portorož Declaration
7 May 2008: eHealth 2008 Conference Declaration
7 May 2008: eHealth 2008 Conference Declaration
eHealth in a Europe “without frontiers”: Building New Initiatives - Working Together
The potential offered by eHealth, and the evidence of its success, has long been clearly identified. Since 2003, with the creation of a series of eHealth conferences of which this is the sixth various Ministerial and high-level groups, together with the European Commission, have agreed to making Declarations and conference conclusions with a focus on eHealth. Based on these yearly commitments, the Member States have achieved a great deal of progress. Their successes include eHealth roadmaps in all 27 of the Member States, in-depth involvement in the large-scale pilot on eHealth, and considerable penetration in many different countries of the use of electronic health records, much of this based on direct implementation of the eHealth Action Plan for a European eHealth Area.1
People-centred eHealth initiatives provide all Europe's citizens with smarter health environments. They aim to satisfy the need to provide 'the three Cs' continuity of care, comprehensiveness (and integration and coordination) of care, and care in the community to Europeans. Citizens and patients are enabled to become actively and dynamically engaged in the actual process of healthcare and on their own personal health needs. Today, we go several steps further in applying all these agreed goals, advancing them further by:
• Building on national eHealth roadmaps
Each Member State has shared with the others its recent plans and strategies regarding policy priorities in eHealth. Commitment is needed to ensure that roadmaps are updated and distributed regularly, to maintain a solid foundation for building future activities. Information should also be disseminated by the Member States regarding the kinds of electronic tools that can support them in addressing the many, concrete challenges posed by health care systems.
• Organising Europe-wide cooperation
In the context of a project supported by the Commission, a consortium of Member States and industrial stakeholders has committed to developing, designing, prototyping, and validating in a pilot context European Union electronic health services based on two distinct health situations: cross-border access to electronic patient summaries and ePrescription (including e-medication). Other Members of the Union and stakeholders are involved in a “watching brief” of this pilot, through which they understand and assess in what ways they can use the applications that are under development. This Union-wide cooperation will continue to evolve over a 3-year period.
• Combining standardisation and safety in eHealth
The Commission plans to issue a recommendation on cross-border interoperability of electronic health record systems, laying out clear guidelines for arriving at the keenly anticipated scenario of enabling patients to access electronic health records anywhere any time. There is a need to emphasise the improvement to patient safety that ICT can facilitate, especially as a result of the enhanced interoperability of systems. Combining standardisation and safety in eHealth must now be seen as a priority issue by all stakeholders. It is fundamental to define a common understanding through semantics in healthcare.
• Involving all stakeholders, in particular patients, and supporting the eHealth industry, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises
Participation of industry in the planned large-scale pilot on cross-border use of patient summaries and medication data is particularly welcome. The paradigm shift towards clear support for eHealth can be achieved only by involving the key industrial and user stakeholders in developing eHealth solutions from the earliest stage. Industry and user stakeholder groups will continue to be consulted regularly during the formulation of policy in the eHealth field.
• Creating an innovative eHealth market
With its focus on deployment-related implementation, the Commission Communication on 'A Lead Market Initiative for Europe'2 outlined barriers to the development of the eHealth market in Europe. The Communication included specific actions for Member States to contribute to accelerating the development of the market, including support for further pilot actions under the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme and a coordinated action that will relate to possible developments in the legal framework, standardisation, certification and procurement activities.
Building the key next steps - three core and parallel endeavours
Three key initiatives must now begin to operate harmoniously alongside each other in order to overcome the major health challenges that lie ahead over the next ten-year period.
• The first crucial area is the need to plan to deploy telemedicine and innovative ICT tools for chronic disease management. The Commission aims to issue a Communication on this topic in the fourth quarter of 2008. Its objective will be to enable Member States to identify and address possible barriers for wider deployment of telemedicine and to coordinate their efforts.
• Second, but equally important, is the need to introduce an enhanced focus on new research opportunities. A more adventurous exploration of next and future research and technology development steps in Europe is required. Government policy-makers should look ahead in a prospective foresight and envisioning exercise. Thus, they will understand how exciting new directions in research and development are likely to affect policy decisions about health care decisions over a ten-year time horizon, and start to plan for such innovation potential. Citizens’, patients’ and health professionals’ involvement will be key to this process, as well as for the success of present-day implementation of projects.
• Third, is the need for a transparent legal framework agreed between the Member States. It would help to define the responsibilities, rights and obligations of all the different subjects involved in the eHealth process, such as national, regional and local health authorities, health care professionals, patients, insurance companies, and other relevant players. Special attention should be paid to exploring the existing Community legislation that affects eHealth significantly, especially the Data Protection Directive, e-Privacy Directive and e-Commerce Directive. This implies an active dialogue and involvement of all the relevant national authorities in the area of health, personal data protection, technical harmonisation, standardisation, and eCommerce.
Getting on board today: the immediate big step that will enhance the quality of health and social care for over 500 million Europeans
The Member States and the European Commission commit to support together the deployment of high-capacity infrastructure and infostructure for health and social care information networks and services such as telemedicine (teleradiology, teleconsultation, telemonitoring, telecare), ePrescription and eReferral. With continued commitment from all the actors involved, European-wide cooperation on electronic health services will lead to the successful formation of a European health information area. As a result, the health of European citizens and the sustainability of European health care systems will benefit considerably.
1 COM(2004)356: eHealth - making healthcare better for European citizens: An action plan for a European eHealth area.
2 COM(2007)860: A lead market initiative for Europe.
The declaration is found here:
http://www.ehealth2008.si/index.php?id=26&mid=25
So what we have here are the 27 countries of the European Union (many of which are less than 20 years from being under the yoke of the former USSR) recognising that after a decade of investment they are really starting to get places and committing both more effort and more investment at the top strategic level.
I wonder will we see a comparable vision and commitment from the current National E-Heath Strategy process and the new Federal Government. The early signs from the recent budget hardly fill one with confidence.
One really wonders why it is so hard in Australia!
David.
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