Editorial

Dear Reader, We are all creatures of today, carrying the legacy of yesterday and the vision of our tomorrows. The term 'Megatrend' would then be the red rope which binds the chronology of our lives and all that happens within. Recent years have seen an increase in the already massive attention given to healthcare. In the Western world at least, healthcare is largest sector for spending – yes, highe...

Exhibitors @ RSNA 2010

McKesson UK, a healthcare IT solutions and services specialist, has been awarded 'IT Supplier of the Year' by the British Computer Society (BCS) & Computing UK IT Industry Awards 2010. The award recognises McKesson's outstanding achievements and contributions in delivering innovative IT solutions and services to healthcare organisations across the country. McKesson has devoted itself to advancing th...

Carestream Health launched a new eHealth portal service at RSNA last week, which will be available in Europe and the United States in early 2011. The new service, which is part of Carestream's portfolio of cloud-based eHealth Managed Services (eMS), enables healthcare providers using the company's remote eHealth Archive Services to access data by any authorised user through a simple Internet connection....

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, is introducing IMPAX Kiosk, its latest workflow enhancement, designed to streamline check-in and improve the patient experience. IMPAX Kiosk is an interactive system that enables patients to register with, and check-in to hospital services without going through the traditional administration desks. The system is intuiti...

HITM News

An epSOS Projectathon was held in Slovakia to test whether the interoperability of country's healthcare systems meets epSOS specifications. The conclusion was a positive one with epSOS determining that 10 pilot sites can begin sharing real patient data from early next year. epSOS, a large scale European pilot of patient summary and electronic prescription, held the four day Projectathon to test content doc...

The Centre for Ethics at the University of Tartu is conducting a study analysing the effects of the digitisation of health data and of patient-doctor communications. In the last few years, Estonia has gradually digitized much of its healthcare system with health information moving to the Internet. Paper prescriptions have been replaced by digital prescriptions and patient data are collected into a single n...

November saw the second Dutch eRadiology test event take place at St. Antonius Hospital in Utrecht. The objective was to bring together pre-competitive vendors to iron out any integration problems with IT systems and to foster interoperability between them.The specificity of the Dutch system is the provision of a personal unique service number for citizens, which is sent in messages. The results demonstrat...

The Bulgarian Ministry of Health has released a call for ideas and comments on how e-health should be implemented in the country. The government's main objectives for e-health are to create an integrated information system to communicate and exchange data among existing institutions such as the National Health Insurance Fund, the National Social Security, the Ministry of Health and the National Revenue Age...

HITM Reports

The Global e-health Forum highlighted best (e-)practices for sustainable healthcare delivery. Approximately 250 delegates from more than 30 countries followed the invitation to the inaugural Global e-health Forum on October 25 – 26, 2010 in Hamburg. In presentations, workshops and discussion forums, the attendees learned about e-health strategies, solutions and services from all over the world. Since rec...

Yet again, MEDICA was a success with an enormous turnout of both exhibitors and visitors proving that the manufacturers of medical technology and medical products have successfully weathered the phase of economic and financial crisis.German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Health Minister Philipp Rösler took a tour of the congress on the opening day, Merkel explaining, "MEDICA is an impressive shop wi...

EU News

On November 16 2010, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Milan Cabrnoch hosted the 'Crossing boundaries in ehealth: the CALLIOPE think tank and collaboration platform' at the European Parliament. The meeting began with opening remarks by Mr Cabrnoch and a presentation on the European strategy for e-health. Zoi Kolitsi, CALLIOPE Project Coordinator, outlined the main outcomes of the 30-month project in...

The European eHealth sector's 'event of the year', jointly organised by the European Commission, HIMSS Europe (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Europe) and the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU has announced that eHealth Week 2011 will focus on the cost and quality benefits of IT solutions in healthcare.The four-day event, taking place in Budapest from 10 to 12 May 2011 wil...

RENEWING Health (REgioNs of Europe WorkINg toGether for HEALTH), a European pilot project aimed at implementing largescale real-life test beds for the validation and subsequent evaluation of innovative telemedicine services, will have all of the participating nine regions running their trials by February 2011, with final results expected by autumn 2012.The project, officially launched in February 2010 and...

Miklós Szócska MD, the Hungarian Minister of State for Health outlined the priorities of the upcoming Hungarian Presidency of the European Council at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG) in October 2010. The overarching theme of the proposed health programme of the Hungarian Presidency will be 'Patient & Professional Pathways in Europe'. Planned legislative priorities include carrying on the legislat...

Cover Story

As we turn the corner towards a significant staging post (Healthcare Information Technology Management's fifth year of publication), we thought it worthwhile to attempt a snapshot of the key drivers of healthcare IT, as seen by experts, for the next 5-10 years. Opinions on the fine points vary. However, a meta-analysis of several leading sources yields an impressively-convergent list of 10 megatrends whic...

Spotlight

Healthcare reform was a pillar of candidate Barack Obama's vision during his presidential campaign. In HIT's analysis of his plans (Issue 1, 2009), we speculated that, in spite of huge challenges, the Obama reform package – known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) 2009 – would trigger fundamental structural changes in the US healthcare system. As Mr. Obama now crosses the midpoint of...

25 projects from across Europe and beyond will compete in the IT @ Networking Awards 2011 on January 19 – 20 2011. This high-level competition will see candidates go through two rounds of presentations in an effort to persuade the expert audience and panel of judges why their solution deserves to win. If last year is anything to go by, attendees will not hold back in cross-examination of each presenter d...

Features

Author Louis Leahy Inventor, Armorlog TM VPCSML TM Smart phones and personal digital assistants (PDA) are fast replacing the desktop, laptop and notebook computers as the primary access device of digital network users. In some developing economies that rely on mobile phones primarily for communications they are already the dominant device. An Ever-Growing Threat The plethora of programmes tha...

Author Pernille Weiss Terkildsen Owner and CEO of ArchiMed, Denmark How the built environment in healthcare influences output in terms of patient safety, efficiency, quality of care, staff turnover, total economy etc, is often overlooked. Perhaps this is because hospitals are different to “normal” companies; the building and the operation in public owned institutions in complex welfare models...

Author Maurice Mars Professor and Head of Tele-health, Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa In this concluding section of his article (the first part was published in our previous issue), Prof. Mars continues his reality check on e-health in Africa – its potential and the challenges ahead. Lack of Capacity Development Ignorance about telemedicine h...

HITM Editorial Team Many patients seem resigned to the fact that hospital stays are to be ‘endured.’ Is it possible to make such stays enjoyable, at least to an extent? Some EU hospitals have implemented a Quality Policy aimed at achieving just such a goal. One of these, portrayed below, won an Award from the French National Assembly. Its secret is to combine the necessary functionalities of data ent...

Author Lindsey Sutherland, Director of IT, Newton Europe It has long been an axiom that IT systems, and their efficient use, can help control escalating healthcare costs. An industry expert who has worked on a variety of projects for the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK offers his insights.Pressures The information necessary to drive operational improvement within the health sector is...

Good information governance is a particularly important area for the healthcare profession where large amounts of personal information about employees and patients are handled every day. Ensuring that access to patient data is secure while also ensuring its availability for relevant clinicians and managers, is critical.Nevertheless, it seems that information security at this fundamental level of access pre...

Country Focus: France

HITM Editorial Team Like other European Welfare States, France has a system of universal health care. This is largely financed by the government through a system of national health insurance. However, there are some major differences in the structure of the French healthcare system and in its financing, versus its EU peers. Most crucially, France spends over 11 percent of GDP on health care, much higher...

HITM Editorial Team The French healthcare system, in some senses, resembles “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. This may seem an unflattering comment for some; it was the expression used by Winston Churchill to describe the Soviet Union on the eve of the Second World War. However, one could make a case for at least some degree of editorial license, given the huge conflicts in perception...

HITM Editorial Team France’s Hospital 2012 reform plan seeks to double the share of spending on healthcare IT from 1.7 percent - a level at the bottom rungs of the EU league table - to 3 percent, and their modernisation constitutes one of the Plan’s over-arching objectives. The hub of the French healthcare IT modernisation programme is theDossier Médical Personnel (DMP) or ‘personal medical file�...


No comment