Editorial

Dear Reader, Today, the financial crisis has once again hit us very hard. Greed still plays havoc with the international stock markets. As banks have grown too big to fail, in 2008 our politicians decided to bail them out with our tax money. Many of us lost savings due to the irresponsible actions of the banking sector without any consequences for the offenders. The following two years the bankers paid the...

HITM News

Better patient safety through electronic communication between clinicians has been secured by the adoption of a common clinical language across all healthcare settings and organisations. Nurses, doctors, physiotherapists are now using SNOMED Clinical Terms (CT), the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world, meaning that information is exchanged accurately and safely acr...

The Balkans Telemedicine Programme Receives 21st Century Achievement Award by Computerworld The Balkans Telemedicine Programme, developed by the not-for-profit organisation International Virtual e- Hospital (IVeH) Foundation (www.iveh.org), received the 21st Century Achievement Award in the Health Category by Computerworld in June 2011 in Washington DC. This award was presented to IVeH for developing and...

The Danish online Patients' Handbook went live on September 6th 2011. It is a free online patient handbook on health and diseases. As the new handbook gives citizens direct access to the same information that doctors use, it is hoped that this will lead to a more open and transparent healthcare. The Patients' Handbook has more than 3,000 articles, written by more than 50 specialists and practicing doctors,...

Managers of the various e-health pilot schemes carried out in Switzerland can now submit their pilots to the eHealth Suisse Secretariat for evaluation. Each project will be assessed on their compliance with the recommendations for the implementation of pilot schemes in line with Swiss e-health strategy. Recommendations for the implementation of the Swiss e-health strategy have been continuously issued by...

The Tajo Hospital in Madrid started implementing an SMS reminder system for medical appointments at the start of October 2011. This new means of communication has been made possible thanks to a new mobile device application developed by the hospital's Admissions Service and IT Department. The new software sends an SMS notifying patients of the date, time and location of a consultation 48 hours before the...

Exhibitors @ RSNA 2010

Steve Freeborn, a renowned pharmacist and contributor to the landmark report on medication errors, "A Spoonful of Sugar - Medicines management in NHS hospitals", will be among the speakers at iSOFT-sponsored e-prescribing conferences at Wembley on 20 October and Old Trafford on 10 November. Freeborn's keynote address, "There and back again - a pharmacist's tale", will describe how pharmacy management in th...

St. Marien-Hospital Borken, Germany, which is a member of a hospital network, is digitising its radiology operation and has signed a five-year agreement with the IT and medicaltechnology company Sectra. The order includes Sectra PACS for processing and archiving of digital radiology images, which will be integrated into the hospitals' RIS and existing IT infrastructure. St. Marien-Hospital performs 75,000...

Together with Synthes, the global market leader for bone implants, Siemens Healthcare has developed the software PreOPlan that will allow surgeons to virtually plan routine bone fracture surgeries (trauma surgery) as well as corrections of leg deformities (osteotomy). Using PreOPlan, the surgeon simulates the planned procedure on an x-ray image of the patient. With the aid of an integrated implant database...

Royal Philips Electronics is stepping up its healthcare research into healing environments by opening a dedicated research facility at its Eindhovenbased Research Laboratories. Based on Philips' in-depth understanding of the hospital patient experience and implemented through the intelligent use of technology, the healing environments concepts aim to accelerate and improve treatment outcomes, while simulta...

Telehealth technology can enable patients to live more independently and improve quality of life whilst delivering savings to the NHS. NHS Plymouth has partnered with Tunstall to implement a telehealth programme that will support the management of long-term conditions (LTCs) for patients in Plymouth. The telehealth initiative will give patients greater control over their condition, allowing them to monitor...

Northern Ireland Health and Social Care (HSC) has procured a pan-Northern Ireland Pharmacy Software Solution for the Business Services Organisation (BSO) Information and Technology Service (ITS). The contract has been awarded to JAC Computer Services Limited (JAC), under a Technology Partnership Agreement that BSO has with HP. The requirement for the pan-Northern Ireland Pharmacy Software Solution will be...

Upcoming Events

The IT @ Networking Awards 2012 (IT@2012) is an open competition for fully implemented, operable healthcare IT solutions. IT@2012 will identify some of the fi nest and most innovative departmental, institutional, local, regional and national healthcare solutions. Intelligent medical technology and IT increase costeffectiveness, productivity and safety. IT@2012 is designed to help healthcare facilities iden...

European News

There is no doubt that telemedicine will play a huge part in healthcare in the future but telemedicine is a complex topic requiring further discussion. For this reason the Telemedicine Shop Talk was organised in October in Brussels. Telemedicine holds powerful promises for European health systems in need of adjusting to demographic changes and the rise of chronic diseases. However, implementing telemedicin...

An initiative of the eHealth Unit, DG INFSO, European Commission, the workshop on 'eHealth and Equity in the Global Health Communities' will take place in Brussels, on December 15, at European Commission premises. The potential of e-Health to help strengthen health systems and to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of care was recognised by the World Health Assembly in its resolution on e-health in...

Dr. Karl Stroetmann of empirica GmbH presented initial considerations on the issues and challenges of moving " From Innovation to Diffusion - Towards successful deployment of eHealth applications" at the recent 2nd European Evaluation Methods Concentration Meeting in Brussels, Sept. 08, 2011. Dr. Stroetmann described how it is not innovations such as the first appearance of a new product or service in the...

Eurocancercoms has announced the launch of ecancerHub: A new, open-access, integrated approach to providing the whole cancer community - patients, doctors, researchers and policymakers - with high quality and trustworthy information. Integrating the best of social media technology into one unique platform, ecancerHub enables patients, healthcare professionals and researchers to interact, connect and share....

Cover Story

This issue's cover story focuses on social media and healthcare. Already indispensible to today's younger generation, social media is emerging as a key player in the healthcare sector. Doctors are tweeting during conferences and some even during surgeries while many hospitals are taking advantage of this new technology for marketing purposes. Indeed, social media has become such an integral part of the hea...

Clalit Health Services (CHS) is the largest health maintenance organisation in Israel and the second largest worldwide. Through its 14 hospitals and more than 1,300 primary and specialised clinics, CHS provides comprehensive medical care to the majority of israel’s population (above four million members).In the upcoming decade, digital platforms will be the backbone of a strategic revolution in the way me...

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Features

For many people, e-health services and telemedicine provide convenient and flexible ways to manage their healthcare. However, a major enquiry by the uk-based independent nuffield council on bioethics has identified a number of ethical questions and challenges associated with various forms of online healthcare. The council's report, medical profiling and online medicine: the ethics of personalised healthcar...

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In the current economic climate many hospitals and medical centres are grappling with cost-cutting measures in their ICT architecture. The reality for today's healthcare CIOs is that they need to both drive IT efficiencies in the short term and ensure that their investments today will support the demands of doctors and nurses well into the future. This is no easy task in complex environments, where info...

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Computer-aided detection (cad) uses software and computers to bring suspicious areas on a mammogram to the radiologist's attention. According to the american cancer Society, early research suggests that cad systems help radiologists diagnose more early-stage cancers than mammograms alone. but some doctors disagree about the accuracy of identifying cancers with cad software. Some feel that cad devices are n...

As a result of developments in imaging technology and information technology, as well as improvements in communication, the pathway for the digital transmission of images was cleared. it is essential to understand how our organisations can integrate this new technology with the interest of the patient in mind, and it is with this as our foundation that, since 2005, the "Guide for the appropriate use of Tel...

Interview

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Book Review

This book is a guide to marketing your IT department within and to your hospital, health system or organisation. Communicating and promoting the purpose of your IT department, its importance to the healthcare organisation, and how the IT team's efforts make everyone's job easier and more productive are crucial to your department's... and your personal success. The book will help senior healthcare IT manag...


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