HealthManagement, Volume 7 - Issue 5, 2007

Dates Announced for 2008 EuroPACS Meeting

Next year’s EuroPACS meeting is to be held June 25 - 28, 2008, Barcelona, Spain, in conjunction with CARS. The conference programme will offer information on the latest and most significant developments in clinical practice, research and education within digital radiology, including:

 

• PACS Planning and Purchasing Strategies

• PACS Beyond Radiology (Cardiology, Endoscopy, Opthalmology, etc.)

• Image Distribution, Storage and Archiving Strategies

• Workflow and Data Flow in Radiology

• PACS/RIS/HIS Integration Issues

• Regional PACS and Teleradiology

• Security and Privacy, Quality Assurance, Legal Aspects

• Standardisation (DICOM, HL7, IHE)

• PACS and E-Learning in Radiology and Medical Sciences

www.europacs.org


Registration Open for 2008 IHE Europe Connectathon

Registration for the next IHE Europe Connectathon, to be held at St Catherine’s College in Oxford, UK will close December 7, 2007. The Connectathon itself will take place Monday, April 7 to Friday, April 11, 2008, while the traditional participants’ workshop will be held on both February 6 and 7, 2008.

 

Participants will benefit from the success of previous events, to ensure that interoperability remains a hot topic and to ensure the future success of their systems in regards to interoperability.


The IHE Connectathon

IHE provides a detailed implementation and testing process to promote the adoption of standards-based interoperability by vendors and users of healthcare information systems. The process culminates in the Connectathon, a weeklong interoperability-testing event. The Connectathon provides the most detailed validation

of the participants' integration work. Participating companies prepare for the event using testing software - the MESA test tools - developed for this purpose.

 

IHE is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care.

www.ihe-europe.org


Abstract Submission Open for 2008 CARS Congress and Exhibition

Abstract submissions for presenters at the forthcoming CARS 2008 22nd International Congress and Exhibition will be accepted until January 10, 2008. Chaired by Prof. Stanley Baum and Co-chaired by Prof. Luis Donoso Bach, this year’s edition takes places in Barcelona, Spain from June 25 – 28, 2008. Programme topics will include:

• Medical Imaging, e.g., CT, MR, US, SPECT, etc.

• Computer Assisted Cardiovascular Imaging

• Image Processing and Display

• Medical Workstations

• Interventional Radiology

• Minimally Invasive Spinal Therapy

• Image Guided Diagnosis and Therapy of the Prostate

• Tumour Ablation Therapies

• Image Guided Radiation Therapy

• Telemedicine, e-Health and Multimedia EPR

 

The CARS meeting will also host the annual conference of the International Society for Computer Aided Surgery, the International Workshop on Computer-Aided Diagnosis, the annual EuroPACS meeting and the Computed Maxillofacial Imaging Congress.

 

And finally, the 7th CARS/SPIE Joint Workshop on Surgical PACS and the Digital Operating Room, chaired by Professor Heinz Lemke (University of Southern California) and Dr. Osman Ratib (University of Geneva) was successfully held on the closing day of CARS 2007. www.cars-int.org


WHO Redesignates ECRI Institute as a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre

ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit body that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) has redesignated ECRI Institute as a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety, Risk Management, and Healthcare Technology.

 

WHO Collaborating Centres are part of an inter-institutional network designed to strengthen resources in terms of information, services, research, and training in support of national health development. As a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre, ECRI Institute’s activities include coordinating a medical device safety programme, providing training in technology assessment, identifying healthcare standards and guidelines, and supporting global patient safety efforts.

 

“We are gratified to again earn designation as a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre,” says Ronni P. Solomon, J.D., ECRI Institute’s Executive Vice President. “As a nonprofit organisation, we are committed to finding the most effective ways to improve patient care and to sharing that information with the international healthcare community.”

 

Since its first PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre designation in 1987, ECRI Institute has worked on a range of health technology issues around the world.

www.ecri.org.uk


Update from CIRSE 2007

With over 4,700 participants and a record level of abstract submissions, this year’s annual congress of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) proved a great success. Abstract submission for CIRSE 2007 reached an all time high surpassing the 1,000 benchmark for the first time in CIRSE history. The strong increase in submissions to the CIRSE meeting as well as the increasing number of late-breaking abstract submissions shows once again that CIRSE is not only an important educational congress, but also an outstanding meeting for the presentation of new scientific findings.


Scientific Programme

The programme put together by Prof. Michael Lee and his scientific programme committee comprised more than 100 hours of lectures and hands-on workshops. CIRSE’s new format streamlined around five major topics (Vascular Interventions, Non- Vascular Interventions, Transcatheter Embolisation, Interventional Oncology and Clinical Practice) facilitated itinerary planning and enabled participants to follow a specific area of interest without overlap. The new format will be continued for CIRSE 2008.

 

The CIRSE Foundation Courses, designed for young doctors to illustrate the basic principles of a specific procedure, focused on embolisation and peripheral vascular disease. These sessions were complemented by a self-assessment test based on the ESR tool which had been adapted for CIRSE by José Ignacio Bilbao.The test could be carried out individually by the participants or in a special session which allowed for Q and A.

 

The ‘CIRSE meets…’ session was dedicated to the European Society for Cardiovascular Surgery (ESVS) and China, a country of almost unlimited potential for IR. Professor Ke Xu and other distinguished members of the Chinese Society of Interventional Radiology (CSIR) gave a very interesting insight into the current status of IR in China as well as into the state of specific procedures and conditions in their home country.

 

The CIRSE 2007 exhibition comprised 3,000m2 of exhibition space, where more companies than ever chose to present their latest developments and many launched their latest products. Numerous companies also offered Learning Centres to the participants. The industry satellite symposia, comprising a newly introduced breakfast slot, also enjoyed great popularity.

 

Apart from the usual highlights of the CIRSE social programme, such as the highly popular CIRSE Foundation Party, this year’s meeting also featured two new events; the CIRSE Fun Run and the first CIRSE Soccer Cup. Both events met with a very positive response, and will become regular features of future CIRSE meetings.


Abstract Submissions CIRSE 2008!

Upon their arrival from Athens, the members of the CIRSE Scientific Programme Committee have already started putting together the topics and sessions for CIRSE 2008 to take place in Copenhagen September 13 - 17. Abstract submission for CIRSE 2008 will be possible from December 4, 2007 until February 12, 2008. Please refer to www.cirse.org or contact CIRSE Central Office at [email protected] to stay updated on CIRSE 2008 and all other CIRSE initiatives.

www.cirse.org

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