HealthManagement, Volume 11, Issue 5 /2009
Dedicated to Healthcare IT
EAHM was proud to collaborate with the European Association of Healthcare IT Managers in the organisation of the IT @ Networking Awards 2009 (IT @ 2009) which took place 29-30 October 2009 in Brussels. IT @ 2009 is an innovative event with the aim of bringing the latest healthcare IT solutions to the pan-European stage.
Mr Willy Heuschen, Secretary General of EAHM was there to represent the association. During his Welcome Address he stressed the importance of healthcare IT to hospital management and that many managers are striving to learn more about the sector. He commented that the right IT solution can increase cost-effectiveness, productivity and precision but also that healthcare IT is complicated sector that can often seem daunting to hospital managers, especially considering a bad investment can have disastrous effects. For this reason EAHM is working to keep members informed so that they can make the right decisions.
He reiterated EAHM’s dedication to healthcare IT mentioning the new Working Group for IT recently set up within the association. The purpose of this group is to further explore the opportunities and possibilities healthcare IT brings.
DG Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding gave an inspiring Eaddress following the final voting and awards ceremony in which she emphasised the importance of utilising IT in healthcare given the current financial crisis and issues of crossborder patient care throughout Europe. She applauded the efforts of the organisers and participants of IT @ 2009 in furthering the development and deployment of innovative e-health solutions.
The event was certainly a great learning opportunity for all who attended. During the first day MINDBYTE sessions over 20 projects were presented illustrating proven benefits that hospital managers can appreciate: Minimised administration costs, enhanced quality and security and ease in workflow. The top five projects selected by the audience thanks to a state-of-the-art, peer-to-peer electronic voting system made it through to the second day WORKBENCH sessions.
After in-depth presentations and question and answer sessions for each project the audience made their choice: The SISRA Health Information System and DPPR Shared and Distributed Patient Record, implemented in the Rhône-Alpes region of France presented by Dr. Pierre Biron.
The data capture and storage network is built and reinforced by an innovative identification access system for patient and professional health ID cards, which guarantees security and confidentiality, anytime, anywhere. Most vitally, it allows patients to remain gatekeepers of their own personal records, thus providing a hands-on answer to one of the most vexing questions confronting e-health everywhere: who owns and controls patient data?
Second place was awarded to “Digitisation of the Nationwide Breast Cancer Screening Programme in The Netherlands” (presented by Bart Verdonck, the Netherlands).
Third place went to “From Free Text to Standardised Language – The National Development Project of Nursing Documentation in Finland” (presented by Kaarina Tanttu, Finland).
