Editorial
Letter from the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, HITM
Dear Reader, Across the IT world, the debate about the pros and cons of the so-called twin pillars of enterprise software, JEE and .Net, has raged since the beginning of their existence. Such a question has not left the healthcare space untouched. Experts from Finland, however, make a compelling case in this issue’s cover story about the growing irrelevancies of such deliberations as far as building ne...
HITM News
The European Association of Healthcare IT Managers (HITM)
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 responsibility of healthcare IT managers and representing...
Agfa Healthcare
Agfa Healthcare to Install Orbis in 37 French Hospitals Agfa HealthCare has obtained a contract to install its ORBIS solution at 37 hospitals in France, belonging to the Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) group. The project (with a total values of 95 million Euros) is seen as an especially ambitious deployment of a healthcare IT solution in Europe, given that AP-HP admits more than one mill...
Carestream Healthcare
New Ris Module to Enables GPS to Directly Book Patient X-Ray Exams Care stream Health and the San Salvatore Hospital in the Province of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo Region of Italy, are developing a module for a CARESTREAM Radiology Information System (RIS). This will allow General Practitioners within the region to directly book digital X-ray examinations for their patients and receive the results back on...
Ge Healthcare
Ge Healthcare to Boost $500m in Home Monitoring Market GE Healthcare has entered into a technology and distribution agreement with New York-based Living Independently Group, Inc., which provides telecare and monitoring systems for seniors. GE Healthcare will distribute and co-market Living Independently’s QuietCare products globally. As part of the agreement, the companies will use GE's Global Research...
Microsoft
Microsoft to Choose Philips Speech Tool for his, RIS/PACS Microsoft has tapped Royal Philips Electronics’ SpeechMagic solution as the preferred technology for the Amalga hospital information system and RIS/PACS. The global licensing agreement between the two companies will bring industrial grade speech recogniton to the Amalga enterprise healthcare tools. Microsoft’s Amalga HIS is built around an ele...
PICS
PICIS to Introduced Eview Enhanced Caresuite Product Picis has introduced its eView for Critical Care Manager, part of the newly launched version 8.2 of the company's CareSuite product range. The eView release is designed to consolidate clinically relevant data gathered during the patient’s ICU experience into a Web-based view, accessible to clinicians anywhere. This permits clinicians to quickly and e...
Lithuania
The project “eHealth services” introduced to the Lithuanian medical community The leaders of the project “eHealth services” organised five topical meetings with physicians and employees of healthcare institutions in the three largest cities of Lithuania. Key strategies and plans for creating the united national eHealth system as well as the aspects and benefits of hospital information systems...
The Netherlands
Progress with the Dutch Electronic Patient Record (EPR) Data shows that so far sixty five doctors have been connected to the EPR infrastructure while by the end of the year, this number is expected to increase to 200. The EPR in the Netherlands is a virtual EPR in the sense that the medical data will remain physically where it originates: it is not stored on a central server. This implies that the...
Norway
Wireless System for Personalised Health Care The research project MyHealthStation was started in 2005 to develop personalised health care for patients with chronic illnesses. Originally it was built as a stationary solution, where patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) could watch training videos, monitor oxygen levels, maintain a personal health diary and keep in contact with physiot...
Ukraine
2nd International Conference “Telemedicine: Myths and Reality” The Association for Ukrainian Telemedicine and eHealth Development and the Western Ukrainian Telemedicine Center «Meditech» are organising the 2nd International Conference “Telemedicine: Myths and Reality” in Lviv on 23-24 October 2008. Conference discussion topics include: Ó Clinical telemedicine (teleradiology, teletrauma...
The World of Health IT
Based on the repeated success in the past two years, the 2008 World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition continues to address the perspectives of clinicians, directors and other healthcare professionals, by offering Ó Educational sessions Ó Vendor exhibitions Ó Best practice exchange Ó IHE Interoperability Showcase Ó Networking sessions Ó Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits...
EU News
Call for 'Universal' Broadband
Access to Broadband Internet is a Cornerstone to Make e-Health Meaning Full for Europe’s Citizens. On several occasions, EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding has expressed “two main concerns”. The first is that “broadband is not yet available to all. Deployment costs are high, particularly in distant and scarcely populated areas. In these circumstances, private operators often do...
Cover
Hospital IT Architectures: JEE, Net and Beyond
Author Hannu Virkanen and Juha Mykkänen, are with the University of Kuopio, Finland. JEE and .NET are the two major frameworks competing in the enterprise software development space. A debate on their similarities and differences has been running since the beginning of their coexistence. Are these comparisons relevant for what is needed in building new healthcare specific IT services? The answer...
Product Comparison
Radiotherapy Treatment Planning System
ECRI Institute Europe Weltech Centre Ridgeway Welwyn Garden City Herts AL7 2AA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1707 871511 Fax: +44 (0)1707 393138 [email protected] www.ecri.org.uk ECRI Institute, a non-profit organisation, de dicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research in healthcare to uncover the best approaches to improving patient care. As pioneers in this s...
Management
MIS Dashboards:Buy or Built
Author Christopher Bain is Healthcare Management Informatician, WCMICS, Melbourne, Australia (www.health-mic.org) The growing trend in Europe (and much of the world) to corporatise hospitals and set performance targets has been accompanied by an escalation in management information requirements. One answer to this challenge lies in Management Information System (MIS) Dashboards. However, as with...
Features
PROMILE: Making a E-Health Real
Author Pavel Kubů, KateřinaŠkařupová, Pavel Trnka are with the Institute for Medical Informatics, Charles University, Prague. Healthcare IT is not entirely a creature of the hospital environment. Indeed, there has long been a great deal of emphasis on preventive health, and IT can indeed be deployed imaginatively to prevent people becoming hospital patients. The Promile system from the Cze...
Real Time Location: RFID, W-Lan, Wi-Fi and Ultrasound
Author Tosh Sheshabalaya, Hospital managers face increased pressures from cost containment and other policy reforms, a relentless level of technological change and ever-newer product and solution choices, coupled to shortages of qualified staff. Meanwhile, there has been no let up in the need for improved efficiency and quality assurance to give patients the best medical care. Real-time location system...
Georgia's CIS Implementation
Author A. Burduli and G. Ghortlishviliare with Gitec Ltd.,Tbilisi, Georgia.E. Kldaishvili is with the GeorgianTeleme...
A Look Back at the EU RTD Programme FP-6(Part 2)
Our previous issue (HITM Vol. 3, Issue 3) provided a summary of 26 healthcare IT projects under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research (FP-6) which ran from 2001-06. We classified them into three categories used by the current Seventh Programme (FP-7): ICT and ageing, IT architecture and infrastructure, and bioinformatics and robotics. The second-part of our analysis looks at the remaining 28 FP-6 heal...
Healthcare IT: The Business of the Profession
Author Tony Eardley and Adam Drury are consultants with Tribal Group. Successful IT supports a business environment by adding value to the organisation in achieving its strategic goals. In healthcare terms, this could mean better health outcomes for patients and safer, more effective services. It could also mean better value for money. Despite changing perceptions, the thought of IT successfully ad...
The Challenge of Capacity Planning: A Core Role for IT
Author Knut Bergsland and Asmund Myrbostad are senior advisers at SINTEF Health Research in Norway (www.health-mic.org). Most European hospitals will have to expand their examination and treatment capacity in the future, as well as restructure core functions. Whether to remain competitive or for other reasons, it will be essential to maximise short and long-term performance. Healthcare IT can p...
Recommendation on Cross-Border EHR Interoperability
Author Tosh Sheshabalaya, While much of Europe slumbered through its summer vacation, the program to build a pan-European e-Health network shifted up one notch, after the European Commission published a Recommendation on cross-border interoperability of electronic health record (EHR) systems. At first sight, the Commission paper, released in July, appears lukewarm. A Commission Recommendation i...
Country Focus: Central Europe
Healthcare in Central Europe:Transiting to Catch-Up
In spite of such positive developments, considerable work still remains to be done. The systems predating EU accession were characterized by significant inefficiencies, with gaps in areas like primary care accompanied by over-supply in others (not least, in terms of specialist physicians, hospital beds and staff). Meanwhile, the growth of private hospitals and practices (pioneered by Poland and Hunga...
Healthcare IT Projects in Central Europe
Czech Republic A National Action Plan eEurope+, dating back to 2002, includes an on-line Health (Zdravotnictvi) program. This is focused on enhanced usage of the Internet to improve quality and cost-effectiveness in the delivery of health care and covers telemedicine and medical documentation. Specific objectives include replacement of health insurance cards with EU-standards compatible smart cards, and...