On 1-3 April 2009, the Luxexpo Exhibition and Congress Center in Luxembourg will be host again to the international Med-e-Tel meeting. The 7th edition of the annual Med-e-Tel conference will focus on proven and tested telemedicine and ehealth applications and provide evidence on clinical effectiveness and economic efficiency as well as on user aspects and satisfaction. In its recent, so-called "Telemedicine Communication" (COM(2008)689), the European Commission also calls for provision and dissemination of scientific evidence of telemedicine effectiveness and cost effectiveness as one of the actions to increase confidence and acceptance of telemedicine services and subsequently to improve access for citizens and healthcare professionals to telemedicine and ehealth services.
Also the European Health Telematics Association's (EHTEL) Task Force on "Telemedicine & Chronic Disease Management" is currently working on building evidence about the impact and opportunities offered by sustainable telemedicine services in the context of the need for changing care processes and will contribute to the Med-e-Tel program with a workshop on "Tele-enabled Healthcare - The Voice from the Field".
Furthermore, EHTEL will be among one of the contributors to the exciting opening session of this year's Med-e-Tel conference program. The opening session will be hosted by the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH), whose President, Prof. Dr. Michael Nerlich, will present on "Standard Operating Procedures in eHealth - Individualized Care or Health Mass Production?" and whose Executive Director, Dr. Yunkap Kwankam, will provide some background and his views on "The Rockefeller Foundation eHealth Initiative for the Global South: Harnessing ICTs to Improve Health Systems Performance". Additional contributors to the opening session include representatives from the European Commission, International Telecommunication Union, International Council of Nurses, Russian Telemedicine Association and Internet Society Belgium who will provide insights into current initiatives and future directions in telemedicine and ehealth.
Medifacts International, a global leader in cardiac safety monitoring services, will share their experience with "Telemedicine in Clinical Trials", together with partners from Novartis Pharma. The session will review key considerations for successful implementation of Telemonitoring Self Measured Blood Pressure (T-SMBP) within the clinical research environment, and provide some practical case study examples - contributing to the evidence base for telemedicine services.
Furthermore, Med-e-Tel 2009 will feature a workshop by the Telenursing Working Group that has been set up within the framework of the ISfTeH. The goal of the group is to bring telenursing experience to nurses worldwide and enhance networking with key industry stakeholders, by organizing sessions and meetings at existing events like Med-e-Tel.
The group was actually initiated at last year's Med-e-Tel and held an inaugural workshop at the joint Canadian Society of Telehealth / ISfTeH conference in Ottawa last October. The Telenursing Working Group is also collaborating with the International Council of Nurses, to get its message and experience across to a large nursing audience.
A regional (BeLux) hospital administrator seminar, endorsed by the CRP-Santé (Public Research Centre for Health), will focus on "priorities, benefits and budgets for health IT in the 21st century".
A returning feature at the annual Med-e-Tel events, this seminar brings together representatives from all major hospitals and other industry stakeholders in Luxembourg as well as various Belgian healthcare institutions, and presents business cases from a number of industry leaders and their clients who draw from successful experiences.
This year, the seminar will reflect upon the short and medium term IT priorities and on making optimal choices for each individual hospital, each department and the healthcare system as a whole; the seminar will feature some of the most interesting experiences in the region and beyond, and show the benefits, as well as the conditions for success and the difficulties and resistance that can be met during implementation.
Another important feature at this year's Med-e-Tel conference will be a workshop by the European NETC@RDS project, which will focus on the deployment of an online service for the electronic European Health Insurance Card (eEHIC).
NETC@RDS' long term initiative is to improve access to the healthcare systems in different regions. Currently the project already has installations in 16 European countries. 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 NETC@RDS workshop at Med-e-Tel will present how the project application 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.
Also the European co-funded project TEN4Health will present a workshop on "Citizen Services for Borderless Healthcare in the European Union: Practical Solutions". Initiated by leading public health insurance providers, TEN4Health contributes towards improved healthcare provision for mobile European Union citizens. The TEN4Health service package assures access of citizens to healthcare in participating Member States' hospitals, based on a secure web service and its integration into developing European eHealth infrastructure networks.
The TEN4Health service is piloted and validated at 11 hospitals directly participating in the consortium, and several other indirectly participating hospital sites across six Member States. The practical solutions to be presented at the workshop during Med-e-Tel include two operational examples of hospitals providing the service to tourists in skiing resorts in Austria, another one at the North Sea coast in the Netherlands and the operation of this service solution in hospitals in the Czech Republic. The service solutions allow health care providers to reliably and online determine that a patient is covered by health insurance and rapidly receive reimbursement through online billing processes being an integral part of the service package. The EHIC Portal "AOK Europa" - a web portal solution offered by German hospitals for healthcare provision to foreigners from all over the world will be presented as well.
The three day Med-e-Tel conference program will include additional sessions and workshops on the topics of chronic disease management, open source software, ehealth in developing countries, elearning, mobile solutions, ehealth integration in routine practice, environmental conditions and telehealth, national ehealth programs and initiatives, Pan-Asian collaboration for evidence-based ehealth adoption and application, and more.
The event also includes an expo and networking area which will feature companies and organizations such as Aerotel Medical System, Aipermon, Arpage, Austrian Research Centers, Card Guard, C-Consult Advice, Electro Security, Escrow Europe, European Commission, European Health Telematics Association, Honeywell HomMed, ICT, International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth and several of its national member organizations, Medifacts International, Medikidz International, medXchange, NETC@RDS, TEN4Health, Vitalsys, Vitaphone, as well as various publications and online information services that will be featured in the event's media corner.
Overall, Med-e-Tel promotes and enhances cooperation opportunities and is the place to meet and network with healthcare and industry stakeholders from some 50 countries in Europe and beyond.
For further information and registration, please visit:
http://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.