Editorial
Letter from the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, HITM
Dear Reader, An HITM delegation recently returned from the EU’s eHealth 2008 Conference in Slovenia. As ever, the Slovenians surpassed themselves in their role as hosts. Back in Brussels, however, we cannot help some familiar morning-after blues. This is not because we yearn for the stunning seaside \ resort of Portoroz, where the Conference was held. No, what we are talking about is déjà vu. A...
HITM Section
The European Association of Healthcare IT Managers (HITM)
The European Association of Healthcare IT Managers The European Association of Healthcare IT Managers (HITM) is a non-profit pan-European umbrella association of all relevant national healthcare IT associations in Europe. Believing in the fundamental importance of unifying healthcare IT professionals at European and global levels, HITM is committed to increasing the professional authority and respons...
Philips
Alliance between Philips,Maastricht UMC+ and University Clinic Aachen The Maastricht University Medical Centre (UMC+), Unir Aachen (UKA) and Royal Philips Electronics N.V. announced that they are to set up a strategic partnership, the aim of which is to pool their knowledge, expertise and experience in the field of healthcare. The planned cooperation will make it possible for new scientific findings to be...
Siemens
Airedale hospital to pilot Siemens RFID Airedale NHS Trust will be piloting the new Radio Frequency Identification technology from Siemens Healthcare to track 100 intravenous pumps across the trust, over 30 days. Both Siemens and Airedalewill for the first time use RFID technology to track assets across various buildings > > on the hospital site, via its new wireless network with an electronic...
Carestream
Carestream’s progress with NHS Scotland PACS Carestream Health Inc. marked its one-year anniversary as an independent company with an announcement of “significant progress” with the NHS Scotland National PACS Project implementation. The project now has 21 sites connected out of the country’s 39 hospitals, with 10,000 general clinical users and 200 radiologists registered on the system. Based...
Greece
Greek staff trained on telemedicine approaches Doctors and nursing staff from several municipalities in Greece - plus four specialists from the Athens Medical Centre - have been trained in the use of telemetric systems as part of an extension of the country’s telemedicine program. The municipalities are members of the Inter Municipality Health & Welfare Network OTA across Greece. Staff took par...
Norway
EPR Norwegian study A study by researchers at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has found that GP electronic patient records in Norway has led to better availability of records, but unsatisfactory access to information. The study by academics Tom Christensen and Anders Grimsmo says that the deployment of EPRs at GPs facilities across the country has been successful, but prob...
The Netherlands
Hospitallbroeders to Deploy New CRM Saturn Corporation, a data base management specialist, has implemented its Eprísa customer relationship management (CRM) software, at the Dutch healthcare foundation, Hospitallbroeders. Eprisa enables users data on one screen and restricts data so the user only sees what they are entitled to. John Mitchell, Executive Director of the foundation, said that after c...
Portugal
ICT to Aid Unemployed Portuguese Over 1,700 unemployed textile workers were offered intensive courses to get ICT skills. The original target was to readmit 10% of the trained people to the job market by 2009. Approaching the end of the three-year project, the organisers can hail a readmission rate of 40%. The success of the project, called TII (Technology, Innovation and Initiative), can be attributed to...
Czech Republic
First International Summer School for Biomedical Informatics The Center for Biomedical Informatics, Institute of Computer Science of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague and the Czech National Group of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics are organising the 2008 International Summer School of Biomedical Informatics. The aim is to bring together researchers from various...
HIT@Healthcare-A Unique Joint Care
The European Association of Healthcare IT managers (HITM) invites you in the month of October to HIT@HealthCare, Health Information Technology Conference & Exhibition. According to the organisers, for the first time in the healthcare history of Belgium and the Netherlands, four e-Health professional associations have decided to join forces in order to organise an international conference and exhi...
ConhIT 2008, Berlin,Germany
ConhIT – connecting healthcare IT has been widely hailed as a successful debut event. 144 companies, including the industry’s market leaders, exhibited their products over an area covering 8,500 m2 in the display halls of the Berlin Exhibition Grounds. The organisers had realised a new concept for Germany, with a professional programme of congress and academy events held at different times accomp...
HIT Paris 2008, Paris, France
This year’s 4th session of theWorld Health Care Congress Europe opened its doors with an executive seminar on Innovative Care ManagHIT Paris 2008, Paris, France Following its successful launch in 2007, the second edition of Health Information Technologies Event ‘Hit 2008’, comprised a Congress and an Exhibition which targeted a variety of health professionals that range from Hospital GeneralManagemen...
EU News
The 2008 Portoroz Declaration
According to participants at the annual EU eHealth 2008 event, which took place at Portoroz, Slovenia from May 6-7, telemedicine and innovative ICT tools for chronic disease management will be the key to delivering people-centered health care. The annual EU eHealth 2008 conference,where stakeholders demonstrated results in the use of information and telecommunication solutions in health care, adopted the P...
Benchmarking ICT Use Among GPS in Europe
E-Health applications have a growing role in the doctor’s practices, according to the ‘Benchmarking ICT use among General Practitioners in Europe’ study carried out by consultants empirica in association with IPSOS on behalf of the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate- General. The pan-European survey was recently published by the European Commission. It shows that 87%...
Cover Story
EHRs in the US
The State of Development of Interoperable Health Records in the United States Author Jim Oakes is a healthcare IT expert,and as a CIO, has been involved in turnaroundsat three US hospitals....
IT in Clinical Trials
An Academic Sponsor's Perspcetive Author Lucy H.H. Parker and Gary C. Roper are with Imperial College,London. The use of IT systems for clinical trial management in a non-commercial setting is a co...
Product Comparison Chart
Picture Archiving and Communication Systems(PACS)
ECRI Institute EuropeWeltech Centre RidgewayWelwyn Garden CityHerts AL7 2AA...
Features
E-Health with Citizens and with Choices
Author Isabel Borges is Policy Officer, AGE, Brussels, Belgium. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has great potential for helping older people and people with disabilities to continue to live at home, at work, and in the community. Technology can enable older people carry out daily activities as well as monitor health, create social networks, increase participation in soci...
Home Healthcare for the Aged and IT
Homecare and Information TechnologyAuthorVivian Vimarlund is Professorat the Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden. Predictions that information technology would become a critical element in the elderly health and homecare setting of the future have proven to be true as healthcare systems grapple with the challenges of implementing and expanding IT-based serv...
The Evolving Role of the CMIO
Author Prof. Antoine Geissbuhler is CMIO, Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland. Healthcare informatics lies at the hub of two forceful, fast evolving trends. The first is the IT industry’s own drive to provide systems developed for the very specific needs of healthcare providers – ranging from pharmacies and specialised clinical research labs to large university hospitals. This has begun to...
PACS and IT
Does IT Really Decrease Costs of Healthcare IT? Ing. E.Talini andProf. D. Caramella are with the diadnostic and Interventional Radiology Department of the University of Pisa, Italy. During the last three years, the Radiology Department at the University Hospital in Pisa, Italy, has introduced PACS technology, implementing an open source PACS. The IT team working at the Division of Diagnostic an...
Evolution in Healthcare IT Delivery
Author Tosh Sheshabalaya, Just after the turn of this decade, it quickly became apparent that investments by the healthcare sector in the emerging e-business infrastructure were simply not keeping pace with other industries. For many analysts of paradigm shifts in technology, however, this was a blessing in disguise. The dotcom Big Bang, as we all know, was followed by an almost equally frenzied Big Wh...
A Look Back at the EU RTD Programme FP-6
In our previous issue, we provided an overview of healthcare IT projects awarded under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research. As noted, many underscore the EU’s response to its e-Health agenda and pathways to use IT to cope with the challenges of an ageing population. Given below is a summary of healthcare IT projects under the Sixth Framework Programme. Healthcare IT Projects in FP-6...
Management
Hospital Mergers and IT in the Czech Republic
Author Martin Zeman is CIO, Regional Health Corporation, Czech Republic. The accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union has entailed dramatic changes in its hospital structures and healthcare delivery policies. IT has been both a driver and a passenger in such a process. An analysis of the experience of RHC, th...
Whither the AS/400?
Author Tosh Sheshabalaya, It is a question on the minds of several healthcare IT managers, and their counterparts in other fields of business. What is the future of IBM's AS/400, a workhorse in hospitals and other enterprises across Europe? In spite of a blizzard of technology and marketing firsts, IBM itself seems to be seriously reconsidering the future of this robust but veteran system, born two deca...
GPs and IT
Author Chris O’Riordan is Head of theCentre for Management Research in Healthcare and Healthcare economics, Waterford Institute of Technology, and Mark Rowe is Managing Director,Rowe Creavin Practice, Waterford. If those of us of a certain age (in other words, no longer in their teens!) think back to our childhoods and the occasional visit to our local GP (General Practitioner), many of us...
Country Focus: Ireland
The Healthcare System in Ireland
In spite of some persistent concerns, Ireland’s healthcare system has been bracing itself for meeting challenges in the years ahead. The country has a mixed public and private healthcare system. These have been subject to considerable reforms in the past two decades. Yet, there is considerable anecdotal and statistical evidence that healthcare delivery in Ireland lags behind the rest of Europe, and that...
IT and the Irish Healthcare System
Information technology has a major role in terms of meeting the objectives of Ireland’s 10- year Health Strategy 2001 Plan. The Plan consists of three pillars: Setting the Scene, Improving the System, and Implementing Change. Explicit IT-related elements are concentrated in the second, on determining ways and means to improve the healthcare system. The Plan was buttressed in 2003 by a National Health Inf...
Ireland UPS the Ante on IT for the Elderly
Author Catalina Ciolan, Ireland’s commitment to the elderly is reflected by its Minister for Older People, Ms Máire Hoctor, an ambitious young representative for the Fianna Fáil party from the constituency of Tipperary North. Ireland has more than 1 million people aged over 60, and like the rest of Europe, their share is increasing. Since her appointment as a Minister last year, Ms. Hoctor ha...