21-22 October 2009, EESC (Jacques Delors Building), Brussels.The European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) jointly invite to the symposium "Joining for Visions of Person Centred Health" all interested stakeholders, i.e. policy makers, users, researchers, vendors and all other eHealth enthusiasts in Europe.
It came out as an obvious process for EESC to collaborate with EHTEL since both have one objective in common: establishing a forum for consultation, representation and information of the actors of the civil society. For EHTEL, the scope of this forum is about the deployment of eHealth and Telemedicine services while, for EESC, the scope is much broader and covers all issues relevant to the European Union.
For EHTEL, the symposium marks the Association's 10th Anniversary and "A Decade of eHealth". For EESC, the symposium marks the recent publication of the EESC Opinion TEN378 on the Commissions' Communication COM(2008) 689 on telemedicine for the benefit of patients, healthcare systems and society. In this opinion, prepared by the section "Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society", EESC welcomes the EC Communication, encourages Member States to integrate telemedicine into their health policies and supports this view by concrete recommendations. At the same time, EESC regrets that not enough attention is paid to the training of health professionals for telehealth services. It should be avoided to educate only some highly specialised "tele-doctors"; rather there should be a sound education of all health professionals in telemedicine.
Currently approx. 120 stakeholder representatives from all over Europe are expected to contribute to the organised civil society dialogue on eHealth and in particular on recent developments like high-level eHealth Governance, cross-border eHealth services, large-scale telemedicine applications and interoperability initiatives. Keynotes will review the parallel achievements both in healthcare and in eHealth over the last ten years and prepare healthcare visions (Moving eHealth beyond the "e") for the future.
A panel "Pulse of the industry" will convene eHealth industry Thought Leaders and representatives of other eHealth stakeholder groups to debate about visions and latest trends.
On its second day, the CALLIOPE Open Session, titled "Cross-border eHealth Services in Europe: Putting Interoperability into Practice" will provide the first public opportunity to learn about achievements and progress in the establishment of a cross-border access to a patient and medication summary on a large scale basis. CALLIOPE is a European thematic network focusing on eHealth infrastructure interoperability, cf. http://www.calliope-network.eu.
For further information and registration, please visit:
http://www.ehtel.org
About EESC
The European Economic and Social Committee is a consultative body of the European Union set up by the Rome Treaties in 1957 and represents the various economic and social components of organised civil society at European level. It is the voice of organised civil society in the Union's decision-making process. It is a forum for consultation, representation and information which enables representatives of Member States' economic, social and civic organisations to play an integral part in the process of shaping Community policies and preparing Community decisions.
The EESC is made up of 344 members, split into three groups: the Employers group, the Employees group and the Various Interests group.
The EESC has six specialist sections whose work is to draw up Committee opinions, advising the three major institutions - the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament.
About the EESC TEN Section
<7>The TEN section is responsible for drawing up Committee opinions in the fields of transport, energy, the information society, infrastructure and services of general interest. Between October 2008 and September 2010, the sections president is Mr János Toth (Group Ill, "Various Interests" Hungary). The Committee opinions play an essential role in policy- and decision making at European Union level: they reflect a considerable level of expertise and the bringing together of the divergent interests of organised civil society. Each year, the TEN section draws up approximately 30 opinions, a quarter of which are own-initiative opinions or exploratory opinions.
In opinion TEN378 It calls "the Commission to foster information campaigns and training programmes, aimed at building health professionals' and the general public's confidence in new telemedicine technologies."
The opinion is available in English and many other languages of the EU http://eescopinions.eesc.europa.eu/EESCopinionDocument.aspx?identifier=ces\ten\ten378\ces1197-2009_ac.doc&language=EN.
About EHTEL
EHTEL (The European Health Telematics Association) was founded in 1999 as a membership driven European association. EHTEL members are key actors in the field of eHealth and include healthcare authorities & government services, healthcare professionals, patients, citizens and consumers associations; industry groups, insurers, international and national not-for-profit associations, researchers, and independent consultants.
EHTEL provides a platform to all European eHealth stakeholders to exchange information, to identify challenges and find solutions towards realising its goals of promoting eHealth tools to improve the quality of health for patients and citizens, access to services, efficiency of care and cost effectiveness. EHTEL provides a number of communications services to its members, actively advocates on the eHealth issues vis-à-vis public institutions, and works through established task forces to achieve these goals. For more information on EHTEL visit www.ehtel.org.
About "A Decade for eHealth"
This year EHTEL celebrates its 10th Anniversary. The past decade by itself has been the witness of quite noticeable changes of healthcare by Health ICT. Still, the EHTEL Board of Directors has extended this perspective and reviewed progress made over the last two decades and prognoses for the coming one.
The conclusions have been presented in keynotes in to major Health and eHealth conferences all over Europe. Moreover, EHTEL has published the report "Reflections on A Decade of eHealth - the second stage in Healthcare Transformation" (available on the website, cf. www.ehtel.org)