Tag: e-health

Despite opposition behind the scenes, plans to let Europeans seek medical treatment in other countries in the 27-country bloc surged forward Tuesday (21 December) when EU countries gave their stamp of approval. 

New EU laws allowing patients to travel across borders for health care will be key for the development of e-health services in Europe, according to policymakers. However, incompatible IT systems remain a major obstacle to fulfilling that promise.

Citizens should take responsibility for the healthcare costs they incur and should be punished or rewarded according to their use of the service, Javier Mur, managing director of Accenture's health operations, told EurActiv in an interview.

A leading figure in the information technology sector believes virtual doctors can help raise health standards in the developing world. Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, says world population growth means low-cost technologies must become accessible for billions of people.

At a time when Europe's economies find themselves walled in by high budget deficits and unemployment, a recent Microsoft-sponsored study claims that investments in information and communication technologies could make all the difference.

The Netherlands has the best healthcare system in Europe, according to the annual Euro Consumer Index. Dutch healthcare was top of the list for the second year running, this time with an even bigger margin of victory.

The potential of technology to fundamentally change how health care is delivered could help curb runaway medical inflation, but some doctors and hospital managers view it as a threat, eHealth expert Dr. Michael Tremblay told EurActiv in an interview.

Potential cost-savings from e-health are being jeopardised because computer systems cannot talk to one another, according to experts. Healthcare IT specialists also warn of resistance from healthcare workers and patients amid ongoing concerns over data protection.

Corporations will pump billions of euros into e-health R&D in a bid to steal a march on competitors in a sector expected to be a major driver of economic growth, Pamela Passman, corporate vice-president at Microsoft, told EurActiv in an interview.

The European Commission is pushing EU member states to remove legal barriers to the provision of distance healthcare, potentially a very profitable new niche market for health in Europe.

A Commission Recommendation on the interoperability of electronic health records aimed at ensuring EU doctors have access to vital information on patients' medical data, wherever such information may be located, opens the door to a large-scale EU pilot project.

The EU's top-down agenda setting on eHealth strategy is not connected to reality, argues the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) in an interview with EurActiv. 

The use of ICT in the healthcare sector is becoming a daily practice, as general practitioners increasingly use computers either to store medical patients' data or assist patient consultation, according to a recent survey. 

Health care systems should reimburse medical devices to support innovation in this booming sector, which, according to the European medical technology industry association (Eucomed), is going to help eHealth and bring solutions faster than the pharmaceutical industry. 

Doctors feel they have been excluded from the EU's eHealth policy, argues Daniel Mart from the European doctors' association, who says the competitiveness of the European eHealth industry has taken priority over proven benefits to patients and health systems. 

Preliminary findings of an EU-backed study assessing financing needs for eHealth reveal an over-emphasis on ICT to the detriment of organisational change and real benefits for health systems.

The Commission has called for experts to share their views on telemedicine as part of policy proposals on innovative technologies for chronic disease management due next year.

The financial challenges facing healthcare systems have lead to the increased application of home-based tele-health solutions, market-analysis firm Datamonitor reports.

The lack of interoperability in systems and services, such as electronic health records, patient summaries, and emergency data sets, has been identified as a major obstacle to the widespread take-up of eHealth application in the EU. The Commission has launched a public consultation on the issue with a view to adopting specific guidelines later in the year.

The EU-27 agree that greater synergies with research and education as well as work on common European standards on eHealth are needed to develop cross-border services and open up new market opportunities in the field.

As the director of Healthcare Device Standards and Interoperability for the Intel Corporation, David Whitlinger is responsible for the chip maker's healthcare device interoperability strategies and the standards development to support those strategies. He is also at the helm of a cross-industry consortium, the Continua Health Alliance, which says it want to establish "an eco-system of interoperable, personal telehealth systems".

The Commission is hosting, together with the Luxembourg Presidency and the Norwegian government, a ministerial conference to promote the use of information technology in the health sector.

This report from the UK institute for public policy research (IPPR) argues that the benefits of ICT to health services could be huge but risk being jeopardised by a failure to provide evidence of impact.

Two days ahead of a Ministerial Conference on e-Health, the Commission has unveiled a new action plan to build a European area where patients and professionals would be able to move freely across borders.