International Conference organised by EHTEL and the National Research Council of Italy24-25 May 2007, Rome, Italy
Facilitating collaboration and communication of Health Professionals in support for continuity of care: A Copernican Approach for Healthcare
Continuity of healthcare through all life spheres of patients is a key element of recent European agendas. The next challenges for healthcare are to cope with information management and communication among clinicians, particularly in community and homecare environments.
Successful eHealth services are nowadays transforming the traditional paper-based workflows by e.g. e-booking, e-prescriptions and e-reports: These services connect systems. Yet the full transformation to ehealthcare requires connecting people. This involves a fundamental change of the perspectives. On a practical level, care processes must be reengineered by a joint deployment of organisational changes and suitable eHealth services.
The objective of the conference is not only to raise awareness for the role and value of eHealth in supporting and enabling the transformation of healthcare services. eHealth is not a set of products, tools or application but a range of responses to the need to improve and transform healthcare services. There is therefore a clear need for health professionals to be significantly involved in the debate on eHealth and its implementation.
The conference explores the concrete issues on "3C" (Continuity, Collaboration, Communication) and their influence on the eHealth infostructure (e.g. dissemination and customisation of clinical pathways, clinical datasets, reference terminologies vs. value sets, patient summaries). The parallel sessions address the lessons learned and the opportunities arising from success stories on the 3C.
Who should participate? The conference will be a forum for Health Professionals interested in how ICT can enable the transformation of their daily practices, for Policy Makers in charge of eHealth deployment strategies as well as all those concerned by the development of healthcare policies aiming at a sustainable evolution of the healthcare system.
If you have any comments on the theme of this event or if you have some messages to deliver on this theme, do not hesitate sending an email at conference@ehtel.org and we will forward it to the Programme Committee for further consideration.
Check for updated programme information at www.ehtel.org and http://www.strategiestm.com/ehtel_conferences/07/Continuity_3C (conference website, online registration will become available soon).