Editorial
IT Governance
Caroline Hommez IT is still often seen as an alien creature, a rather scary entity that you have to tolerate in your hospital as a ‘sign of the times’, but that you would not invite to a weekly staff meeting, let alone a board meeting. The problem is that this attitude most probably has detrimental effects on hospital management. To be fully efficient and effective, IT has to be integrated i...
Investing in IT
Governing the Hospital Information System
Author Claude Hagège, Director of Information Systems, Centre Hospitalier Sainte Anne, Paris, France. He is the author of ‘Gouverner le SIH’ (‘Governing HIS’) published in December 2006 by LEH (www.leh.fr). From the centralised IT systems approach of the 1980s to the information system approach of the 2000s, the fundamental evolution which took place in the health establishments is...
Digital Quality Manuals: Delivering More Efficient Quality Management
Author Dr. Christian Utler Head of the QM Department University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany E-mail: [email protected] The Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital The Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital consists of 14 centres containing more than 80 interdisciplinary, collaborative inpatient and outpatient departments and institutes. With 1,369 beds at its disposal (plus 1...
Modernisation of French Hospital Systems
Author Corinne Gazeau, HIS Department Director, National Mission of the Support for Hospital Investment (‘Mission Nationale d’Appui à l’Investissement Hospitalier’) Paris, France Email: [email protected] The investment in healthcare establishments must allow for building a healthcare system capable of facing the challenges of the future. The Hospital Plan 2007, rep...
The Need for Clinical Engagement
Author John Ironmonger, Account Director, System C Healthcare, Warrington, England Email: [email protected] ‘How many doctors,’ goes the old joke, ‘does it take to change a light-bulb?’ There are plenty of possible answers to this riddle. ‘It depends if the bulb was insured,’ is an American response. ‘One to change the bulb, another to give a second opinion, and a th...
Hospital IT Award
From Small-Talk to an EU ICT Prize
Author Stéphane Chemouny, PhD, President and Director of Scientific Affairs, Intrasense, Montpellier, France Email : [email protected] On March 16th 2007, Intrasense was awarded the European ICT Prize for its medical image review and aided-diagnosis software suite Myrian® at CeBIT, the world’s largest ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) tradefair held in Hanover, Germ...
eHealth Developments
Mobile Consultant: Diagnosis and Consultation on the Go
Authors Konstantinos A. Banitsas, School of Engineering and Design, E&CE, Brunel University, West London, England Theodoros K. Kalyvas, GERCO LTD, Athens, Greece Pantelis Georgiadis Medical Image and Signal Processing Lab, Technological Educational Institution of Athens, Greece The time required for a medical consultant to offer an expert op...
Congresses/ Conferences/ Symposia
The Elderly, Who (e-)Cares?
Authors Annelies Veys and An Jacobs, Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (www.ibbt.be), Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication (smit.vub.ac.be), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium Email: [email protected] In the far north of Norway, the Tromso Telemedicine and eHealth Conference (TTeC) 2007 took place from 11 to 13 June in Tromso. This conf...
Healthcare IT Needs A ‘People Side’ Too
Searching through the programme for the World of Health IT (WHIT) conference and exhibition, which takes place in Vienna from 22-25 October, what stands out is the evident commitment on behalf of the organisers to engage with as many stakeholders as possible. The 2006 event in Geneva drew around 2,000 attendees and was certainly a success by any standards, except the relative lack of ‘front-line so...