The NETC@RDS for eEHIC ID, an EU co-funded project, aimed at achieving the initial deployment of an online service for the electronic European Health Insurance Card (eEHIC), has announced that its Mid-Term workshop will take place in Luxembourg on April 2nd, 2009 within the frame of Med-e-Tel 2009, the International eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT Forum. In awareness of Europe growing together, the NETC@RDS long term initiative is aiming to improve access to the healthcare systems in different regions within, currently, 16 European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The existing service, already successfully tested during a market validation phase in 85 pilots across 10 EU Member States, has been progressively extended to enable easy access to healthcare for European citizens on temporary stays in any other EU country.
The project service sites are healthcare facilities (hospitals, ambulatory care and GPs offices) where the NETC@RDS services are being deployed and made operational, enabling "non-planned" healthcare for European citizens who provide evidence of entitlement.
The online service can be via an eye readable EHIC, or a national health insurance electronic card, or via certain national e-ID chip cards issued by the responsible government authorities of the participating partners. An online verification provides assurance to support acceptance procedures for both health insurances and healthcare providers. Using the NETC@RDS application and an optical card reader or a smart card reader, healthcare facility staff read administrative data from the EHIC or national health insurance card. Eligibility is then verified within a few seconds by checking the administrative data via two NETC@RDS portals against the database of the relevant health insurance authority. The electronic data set is processed and used as a proof of entitlement and guarantee of cross-border reimbursement.
The NETC@RDS workshop at Med-e-Tel will present how the project application matured, was validated and is now deployed through the service sites, opening a wide discussion on: policy and legal aspects, potential market dimension and commercial features of the services, and effectiveness of the proposed ICT solution in view of the interoperability of the eEHIC as forthcoming challenge for borderless care in Europe.
The workshop is aimed at government executives, policy decision makers, EU officials, representatives from healthcare organisations, healthcare professionals, industry and other healthcare stakeholders.
Workshop program will be made available soon on www.netcards.eu and www.medetel.eu.
Related news articles:
- Med-e-Tel's Profile
About Med-e-Tel
Med-e-Tel focuses on ehealth and telemedicine applications and a wide range of other medical ICT applications and on the convergence of information and communication technology with medical applications, which lead to higher quality of care, cost reductions, workflow efficiency, and widespread availability of healthcare services.
The "Med" in Med-e-Tel stands for healthcare services (institutional and home based care, prevention and education) and for medical products and equipment (medical imaging equipment, monitoring devices, electronic health records, etc.).
The "e" stands for the electronic and IT industry and services (hard- & software, internet, e-mail, etc.).
The "Tel" stands for telecommunications (whether it is POTS, ISDN, wireless, satellite, videoconferencing, VoIP, or other).
For further information, please visit www.medetel.eu.