The workshop, which is invitation-only, will be organised by empirica and the Work Research Centre (WRC), which jointly carry out the 9-months study. If you are interested in receiving more information, please get in touch with us: workandc...@...irica.com

Agenda and background information: workshop_agenda_info.pdf.

The first workshop is slated to be held at the High Level eHealth Conference and World of Health IT in March 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. "In order to let Europe reap the full benefit of personal health systems, healthcare stakeholders must understand and support the range of challenges in facilitating the interoperability of personal health systems, across technical to semantic, organisational and legal aspects," said Mario Romao, co-chair of Continua’s European eHealth Policy working group. "This initiative - Smart Personal Health - is an activity co-financed by the European Commission that will deliver a series of key awareness raising activities throughout Europe".

Specifically promoting interoperability in as well as between personal health and other eHealth systems, Smart Personal Health will hold workshops with varying stakeholder foci in Barcelona, Belfast, and Berlin, and conclude with a pan-European interoperability conference during the Continua Winter Summit 2010. A final report on key interoperability challenges for personal health systems and recommendations for respective policy actions will merge results from the many stakeholder dialogues, integrated with research outcomes from empirica’s experts. As Dr. Veli Stroetmann, lead author of the EC’s study SemanticHEALTH Roadmap observed: “This work will be a great opportunity to bring to bear our vast experience in the interoperability field to advance priority European Union policy issues.”

The report's policy recommendations will target the European Commission, European national and regional authorities, stakeholder groups as well as industry.

To see videocasts from the Stockholm conference, please consult http://www.eu-patient.eu/conference2009/
To learn more about the ValuePlus project and the involved organisations, please consult http://www.eu-patient.eu/projects/valueplus/index.php

Die Studie wurde im Auftrag der EU-Kommission durchgeführt, um die aktuelle Situation in den Mitgliedstaaten hinsichtlich der Barrierefreiheit von Internetseiten öffentlicher Stellen zu untersuchen. Dabei zielt die Untersuchung insbesondere darauf ab, nationale Politikansätze in ausgewählten Ländern zu identifizieren und Herausforderungen für eine zukünftige EU-weite Politikgestaltung in diesem Feld zu identifizieren.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/library/studies/web_access_compliance/index_en.htm

TThe objective of the workshop is to share the results and views with the invited experts, receive their comments and views on these but also opinions and advice on how to further develop the report and recommendations.

Prior to the workshop the study team will provide the invitees with a draft study report. The report will include a description of the objectives, the methodology used and the results achieved from a survey of almost 400 European websites which are provided online in a highly searchable knowledge base, selected case studies, conclusions and preliminary recommendations.

The workshop addresses in particular representatives from the

• European Cultural Contact Points (CCP)
• Owners, and operators of websites and online platform from the cultural sector and
• European Commission.

An online registration facility is available on the CULTUREMAP website at: Culturemap workshop registration

or send an e-mail for registration to werner.ko...@...irica.com.

Study team contact at empirica: werner dot korte at empirica dot com, telephone: +49 228 98530-0

Today's severe economic crisis is likely to affect considerably the capability and willingness of European companies, especially SMEs, to engage in globalisation. In fact, it appears that the more an economy, sector or company is integrated in the global market economy, the harder it has been hit by the recession. The likely outcome will be a backlash in the globalisation process, with companies shying away from engagement in countries outside of Europe, in an attempt to control risk and to deal with market volatility. A retreat of European companies from global collaboration, however, would play havoc with the EU economy's capability to maintain competitiveness and to regain sustainable levels of growth in the future.

It follows that additional efforts will be needed to enable Europe’s companies to fully participate in global business opportunities. Our research argues that, in order to do so, companies need to make effective use of CWE, supported by a wide range of technologies and techniques for virtual collaboration. Examples for CWEs, widely used for global collaboration, include work in virtual teams and Communities of Practice (CoP). The fast progress in ICTs which can support “frictionless” communication and collaboration across time and space can give the impression that virtual, global collaboration is now at everybody’s fingertips. Our research shows, however, that effective implementation of CWEs represents a considerable challenge. Global team work can quickly result in frustration if it is ill-prepared or insufficiently supported by organisational structures and processes.

The study aimed to contribute to a better understanding of the potentials and practical challenges arising from the spread of online collaboration within a business environment which increasingly relies on collaboration at global rather than national or European scale.

Final Report of the NewGlobal study can be downloaded here.

• people with disabilities in Europe continue to be confronted with many barriers to ICT usage (eAccessibility deficit),
• the eAccessibility situation across Europe as a whole compares very unfavourably with that in Australia, Canada and the USA (eAccessibility gap),
• the situation across Europe shows many ‘white spaces’ or areas of uneven attention (eAccessibility patchwork).

Project CommonWell

To present the report to a wider public, a project presentation was given at the Ministerial e-Inclusion Conference

The booklet will be distributed through the EC e-inclusion campaign "Be Part of It!“.

People dealing with eAccessibility issues (representatives from disability organisations or industry, policy makers, researchers and others) are invited to learn from the information provided and also to contribute actively to the ongoing development of the Profiles.

Further Profiles, for Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Australia and Canada will be published in the coming weeks.

The eAccessibility Country Profiles are available from
www.eaccessibility-progress.eu.

 

Workshop introduction and agenda
NewGlobal project website

More information

• Download the workshop agenda (*.pdf, 97KB)
• Download the slides of the presentation by Karsten Gareis (*.pdf, 233KB)
• Download the slides of the presentation by Richard Wynne (*.pdf, 33KB)
• Download the slides of the presentation by Lutz Kubitschke (*.pdf, 96KB)

An interview with the project manager Werner B. Korte, empirica can be found here:
Interview with the project manager Werner B. Korte

• ARGOS eHealth: an EU-USA project, funded by the European Commission’s DG External Relations, for a Transatlantic Observatory for Meeting Global Health Policy Challenges through ICT-Enabled Solutions, focusing as one of three topics on VPH issues
• NMS-Physiome: A project on tools to develop the NeuroMusculoSkeletal Physiome – VPHOP-SIMBIOS cooperation. EU-funded cooperation of the worldwide largest research projects focusing on simulating the musculoskeletal apparatus, the Osteoporotic Virtual Physiological Human (VPHOP) integrated European project and the Center for Physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures (SIMBIOS) (at Stanford University, USA), funded by the USA National Institutes of Health
• VPHOP: Osteoporotic Virtual Physiological Human EU FP7 large-scale integrating project: a multiscale modelling and simulation technology will be developed to predict the strength of a patient’s bones, how this strength is likely to change over time, and the probability that he will overload his bones during daily life. The various modelling technologies developed will be assessed in terms of clinical and socio-economic impact and safety on small cohorts of patients enrolled at four different clinical institutions, providing the factual basis for effective clinical and industrial exploitation.

empirica expects to strongly contribute to future endeavours in this fascinating research field and thereby also to help guide its outcomes towards realistic and beneficial clinical applications.

DebugIT coordinator, Dr. Dirk Colaert of Agfa HealthCare, will give a presentation at a DAMA BeLux Event on “Challenges and Issues in Health Care Information Management”, on Wednesday, 28 April 2010, 13:00 to 18:00, Avenue de Tervueren 211, Brussels, hosted by RIZIV / INAMI. The topic of his talk is “Scaling out the Healthcare Enterprise To support Regional E-health”. Participants are very welcome.

For more information please see http://www.dama-belux.org/.

The strategy document was followed by the establishment of six working groups of federal and Canton experts developing more detailed plans to cope with implementation issues around these topics: “Standards and architecture”, “Pilots and public-private-partnership (PPP) trials”, “Online services and empowerment”, “Education”, “Legal and regulatory basis”, and “Financing and incentives’ structures”. The work of these sub-projects is coordinated by the national eHealth coordination body, which acts as an intermediary between the national and Canton level stakeholders. The coordination body is an entity under stewardship of the National Health Office.

 After the detailed planning documents from the working groups became available in 2009, the Swiss government initiated a series of high level expert reviews and hearings on the overall approach chosen, as well as the detailed recommendations submitted by the six working groups. Some of these reviews, such as a detailed expertise by European eHealth experts from empirica GmbH, enriched the discussion with valuable insights from their pool of international experience. A summary of the sometimes critical points, as well as specific recommendations for ensuring a successful implementation of the Swiss eHealth strategy, were recently published in the Journal Swiss Medical Informatics 2010 (Issue 68, pp. 3-8). A key message delivered to Swiss policy makers is the importance to first formulate concrete healthcare policy priorities and challenges, which guide the development of eHealth solutions, instead of letting eHealth guide healthcare priorities. Another specific suggestion is to link financial and other incentives for all affected stakeholders, not just to the immediate implementation phases, but to comprehensively involve them all already during the planning process and consider their longer-term socio-economic benefits and costs. The latter go beyond purely economic impacts and private gains, into the field of benefits to society as a whole.

Video of live expert interviews: click here

The report can be downloaded from the EHR IMPACT website or from the EC information centre. For a printed copy, please contact ehea...@...europa.eu. For content issues, email ehr-imp...@...irica.com.

This invitation-only meeting is aimed at furthering the work of establishing a Transatlantic Observatory. The main goal for this meeting is to build on the work and discussions from the March 2010 project meeting in Barcelona, Spain; facilitate further development; and define action plans for advancement. Says Karl Stroetmann, Senior Associate with empirica: “The ARGOS Workshop in Washington, DC we see as a starting point, from which we can build a truly international platform for dialogue and collaboration on national as well as global eHealth policy challenges. Together with our American and European partners, our goal is to create the leading global forum for exchange and networking on eHealth policies, which will address making the vision of supporting global health policy challenges through information and communications technology-facilitated solutions become a reality.”

In the ARGOS eHealth project, the following specific target areas will be addressed:

• Interoperability in eHealth and certification of   Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs);
• Definition of a common, consistent approach and identification of indicators and tools for measuring the adoption, usage and benefits of eHealth;
• Modelling and simulation of human physiology and diseases with a focus on the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) and the use of such solutions to support the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.

Ultimately, in close cooperation with stakeholder groups on both sides of the Atlantic, the work of this project will be translated into recommendations to support coordinated actions on eHealth strategies in the EU and the US.

Links:

http://symposium2010.amia.org/special-events
http://argos.eurorec.org/

Contact (for interviews and further information):

Dr. Rainer Thiel or Dr. Karl Stroetman

Europe is the global leader in nation-wide implementation of eHealth solutions
23.09.2010

"Europe is leading the rest of the world in advancing towards modern eHealth infrastructures and implementations" was the conclusion of Dr. Karl Stroetmann of empirica Consultants at an eHealth Strategies Symposium in Brussels. This is a field where Europe has achieved and even overachieved its Lisbon Strategy goals. Results of the Monitoring National eHealth Strategies study (www.ehealth-strategies.eu) presented on Sept. 16, 2010 in Brussels, show that virtually all Member States of the European Union have either already begun or will begin shortly to undertake the implementation of national systems making basic patient data available to all healthcare professionals whenever and wherever needed.

More than 100 high level political representatives from European Ministries of Health, representatives of stakeholder associations and European policy institutions attended the workshop which showcased several good practice cases of Member States eHealth strategies and highlighted the overall trends across Europe with regards to eHealth initiatives and implementation.

Compared to four years ago, when Member States had published only high level official policy documents or roadmaps, now almost all EU and EEA Member States have detailed documents outlining concrete eHealth goals, implementation measures and past achievements. The following overview identifies key fields of national level activities and the considerable increase recorded between 2006/2007 and today:

While patient summary and Electronic Health Record (EHR)-like systems have already been high on the agenda for some time, most Member States (+16) now realise that there is an urgent need for (continuous) evaluation activities, both to better control policy progress and learn from challenges and experiences.

Ilias Iakovidis, Deputy Head of the ICT-for-Health Unit of the European Commission, which ordered this survey, noted "Services high on the agenda are the electronic transfer of prescriptions and the provision of telehealth services for doctors and patients in remote regions or for chronically ill patients at home. These are among the key activities identified in our 2004 eHealth Action Plan. We are happy to see that the development of this Lead Market Initiative, which we have supported for many years, is gaining such momentum." Another indication of the strong political commitment at the national policy level is the growing establishment of permanent administrative support structures. National competence centres like Gematik, Germany's Society for Telematic Applications of the Health Card in Berlin; ASIP, France's Agence pour les Systèmes d' Information de santé Partagés in Paris; and THL, Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki are increasingly used models of organisation.

This support is further reflected by the initiation of the epSOS (Smart Open Services for European Patients) project by 12 Member States. The goal of this project is to establish interoperable cross-border services for the exchange of basic patient summary data and electronic prescriptions. "The European Parliament strongly supports this initiative and welcomes the fact that another 11 countries will soon join. We expect considerable benefits for all citizens in terms of the quality of health services they receive when abroad and in need of unplanned help", remarked Dr. Milan Cabrnoch, Member of the EP and its Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are a consistent element in almost all strategies and roadmaps. However, EHRs are usually not well defined, and they often (implicitly) refer only to a kind of patient summary or similarly brief or basic patient record. It is also becoming apparent that clinicians’ enthusiasm for comprehensive electronic health records, which may also connect patient data in diverse record systems at hospitals, community services etc., often relates more to perceived benefits on their immediate surroundings than to a geographically widespread sharing of patient data.

The actual stage of implementing patient summary and EHR-like systems in Europe is shown in this table:

ePrescription is another key application that the majority of Member States have as a part of their national eHealth strategy and/or intentions. ePrescription is the electronic capture and then transfer of a prescription by a healthcare provider to a pharmacy for retrieval of the medicine by the patient, and the recording of dispensation in the patient's record. As the following table illustrates, only a few European countries have implemented a fully operational ePrescription service, and these are mainly in primary care, i.e. excluding dispensations in hospitals:

Up until now, patients rarely have had access to their own medication profiles and the ability to reorder certain repeat medications themselves via the Internet. This access is expected to increase considerably in the coming years in those countries where it would be within the constraints of regulatory boundaries.

The results of the Monitoring National eHealth Strategies study reveal that reaching agreements with regards to eHealth strategies and, to a greater extent, implementation of these strategies across Europe have proven to be much more complex and time-consuming than initially anticipated. In addition, the complexity of eHealth as a management challenge has been vastly underestimated. It is evident that further exchanges of information on national and regional experiences are needed; both in relation to successes and failures, and that these lessons learned may prove particularly beneficial to eHealth in Europe as a whole.

Many challenges remain and there are many obstacles yet to be overcome: Issues of legality, semantic interoperability, standardisation and electronic identification domains must be resolved before these services can be regarded as truly Europe-wide and accessible to every citizen. Luc Nicolas from the Belgian Federal Public Health Services underlined that all Member States therefore "Strongly support the recently established eHealth Governance Initiative of European countries intended to tackle these and other issues at the highest political level."

The symposium was kindly supported by the Belgian Government in the context of its Presidency of the EU.

Presentations held at the symposium:

empirica: Monitoring national eHealth strategies - Study approach, results, outlook and recommendations

Claudio Saccavini, Arsenàl.IT: Integrating the Veneto regional, collaborative eHealth platform into the Italian eHealth Strategy context

Wendy Currie & David Finnegan, Warwick Business School: Progressing at different speeds towards national e-Health infrastructure and solutions for europe: findings from a study on enabling technologies for e-Health

Michal Danilák: The citizen centric eHealth approach and implementation measures in Slovakia

Michal Danilák: Mind map - Slovak National eHealth Programme

Michal Danilák: Lessons learned - eHealth Slovakia

Michal Danilák: Health Challenges

Hans B. Haveman: eHealth and Interoperability in the Netherlands

Luc Nicolas: Building trust - step by step - in a federated system in Belgium

Michèle Thonnet: eHealth for Health - From strategy to implementation : some progress and lessons

The study has also been reported on by eHealth Europe:

www.ehealtheurope.net

More information: Work and Care 2

More information: eCareBench

Bonn, 5. Oktober 2010

Etwa 30 Experten aus Politik und Wirtschaft diskutierten am 30. September 2010 in Köln die Frage, ob und wie Innovationspolitik dazu beitragen kann, Wirtschaftskrisen schneller zu bewältigen oder ihre Auswirkung zu mildern. Der Workshop wurde von empirica gemeinsam mit dem Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln Consult im Kontext des „INNO-Grips“ Projekts organisiert, das Teil des PRO INNO Europe Portals der Europäischen Kommission ist.

Die jüngste Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise hat Europas Wirtschaft ernsthaften Schaden zugefügt. Enorme Schulden wurden angehäuft für konjunkturbelebende Maßnahmen und um systemrelevante Institutionen zu retten. Zur Refinanzierung ist jetzt nachhaltiges Wachstum notwendig. Theoretisch kann Wirtschaftswachstum durch Innovation ausgelöst und beflügelt werden. Daher werden gerade in Zeiten des Abschwungs verstärkte Investitionen in Innovation als geeignete Maßnahme vorgeschlagen, sowohl um kurzfristige Effekte zu erzielen als auch um schneller und nachhaltiger aus der Krise zu kommen. Schumpeters bekanntes Modell der „kreativen Zerstörung“ weist auf die marktbereinigenden Effekte des Abschwungs im Konjunkturzyklus hin: weniger produktive Unternehmen werden aus dem Markt gedrängt, während hochproduktive Unternehmen auch in der Krise erfolgreich sind.  Das führt in Summe zu einem allgemeinen Anstieg der Produktivität. Finnland wird in diesem Zusammenhang oft als Beispiel für die Chancen und positiven Effekte einer umfassenden, anti-zyklischen Innovationspolitik angeführt. Das Land stand zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre am Rande des Bankrotts und schaffte durch Innovation und Restrukturierung den Umschwung zu einer der erfolgreichsten Volkswirtschaften der jüngeren Zeit.

Im Vorfeld des Workshops hatten Ökonomen des IW Consult Köln als Diskussionsgrundlage einen Policy Brief erstellt, der empirische Befunde über den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Innovationsverhalten und dem Wirtschaftszyklus liefert. Insgesamt sind die Autoren eher skeptisch, ob anti-zyklische Innovationspolitik wirklich ein vielversprechendes Instrument zur Bekämpfung von Wirtschaftskrisen darstellt. Sie empfehlen, dass sich die Europäische Innovationspolitik eher darauf konzentrieren sollte, für positive Rahmenbedingungen für Innovation und für harten aber fairen Wettbewerb zu sorgen, und Grundlagenforschung zu fördern. Allerdings weisen die Autoren auch darauf hin, dass zielgerichtete anti-zyklische Maßnahmen in bestimmten Bereichen wichtig sein können, besonders um die Innovationsaktivitäten von kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU) während der Krise aufrechtzuerhalten. Da KMU bedeutende Quellen für Innovation sind, und in der Regel überproportional zur Entstehung neuer Beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten beitragen, sind die KMU hochrelevant in diesem Zusammenhang. Die Studie empfiehlt, unter anderem, steuerliche Begünstigungen für Forschung & Entwicklung sowie Investitionsausgaben, da dies eine rechtsverbindliche und somit sichere Förderungsmaßnahme darstellt, was gerade für KMU ein zentraler Aspekt ist.

Davon abgesehen empfiehlt die Studie wegen der längerfristigen Wirkungsweise einen systemischen Ansatz für Innovationspolitik, zum Beispiel durch eine enge Verzahnung mit den Politikbereichen Bildung, Wirtschaft, und Arbeit.

 

INNO-Grips ist Teil des PRO INNO Europe Portals (http://www.proinno-europe.eu) der Europäischen Kommission, ein Brennpunkt für Analysen zur Innovationspolitik und die Zusammenarbeit in diesem Bereich in Europa. INNO-Grips unterstützt Politikgestalter dabei, Antworten auf neue Anforderungen, Trends und Phänomene im Bereich der Innovationspolitik zu finden. INNO-Grips wird von empirica, Bonn, auf Basis eines Vertrags mit der Europäischen Kommission, Generaldirektion Unternehmen und Industrie, gemanagt. Der Vertrag läuft noch bis Ende 2012.

The study comprises the following tasks:

1. Recommendation implementation monitoring: Monitoring implementation of the Recommendation on Knowledge Transfer.

2. Public Research Organisation performance: Collecting information on the individual performance of Public Research Organisations and Universities performing research in knowledge transfer.

3. Code of Practice implementation and impact analysis: Analysis of the implementation and impact of the Code of Practice for a sample of at least 200 Public Research Organisations and universities performing research.

4. Stakeholder workshops: Workshops of Public Research Organisations and Universities performing research, industry and other stakeholders.

A website will soon provide more information about the tasks and achievements of the project.

On Sept. 16, 2010 the European Commission and empirica, in cooperation with the Belgium Presidency of the EU, will present the final results of the eHealth Strategies study to a wider public. Commissioned by the EC in 2008, the eHealth Strategies study has surveyed the status-quo and assessed the progress made by EU Member States and EEA countries towards realising European eHealth Action Plan goals.

Download the agenda

The workshop will summarise key outcomes and feature presentations by representatives of national eHealth programmes on lessons learned from eHealth strategic planning and implementation. After a networking lunch and the presentation of good practice cases, policy recommendations for further eHealth diffusion will be discussed. 

The workshop is free of charge, but by invitation only. If you are interested in participating, please send a short note to Ms Uta Walossek ( registration.eHStrateg...@...irica.com) stating your specific interest, full name and affiliation.

http://www.ehealth-strategies.eu

In recent years, ICT has permeated throughout the EU society and economy, to an extent which nobody would have expected only a short time ago. Many observers believe that the fast spread of computer networks, mobile telephony and other ICT is having far-reaching, partly even transformative, implications for European society. Unfortunately, much of what has been said about ICT’s social impacts has not been based on scientific insight but on guesswork, hype and ‘common sense’. It is for this reason that the study on the ‘Social Impacts of ICT’, commissioned by the European Commission, DG Information Society & Media, explored the available empirical evidence about developments in some of the most relevant domains in Europe, and beyond. As there are considerable differences in the extent to which ICT is utilized in different domains, seven such domains have been studied separately in this project:

• Participation and Policy Making
• Education
• Work
• Consumption
• Health
• Community and Family
• Creation and Distributed Innovation. 

Given strong differences are to be expected in the situation between Europe and those other parts of the world in which uptake of ICT is widespread (for example, North America, Japan and the fast developing countries of South-East Asia), the latter were dealt with explicitly in a separate piece of research.

Full version of the report (589 pages):
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/docs/eda/social_impact_of_ict.pdf

The Executive Summary (45 pages):
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/docs/eda/social_impact_of_ict_exec_sum.pdf

Chapter on Impacts of ICT in the area "Community and Family" (88 pages): http://www.empirica.com/publikationen/documents/2010/Community%20and%20Family.pdf

Chapter on Social Impacts of ICT: Comparison between Europe and other parts of the world (61 pages):

Download here (PDF, 5 MB)

http://empirica.com/themen/info_ges/projekte_en.php?taken=aaul2

25 October 2010 - This report authored by Gregor Heilmann and Werner B. Korte of empirica presents an original analysis of the frequency and location of the terms creativity and innovation and relevant synonyms in the obligatory schooling curricula documents from the EU Member States. In total, 37 countries and/or regions were studied and about 1,200 curricula documents were identified and analysed. Given national and/or regional differences in the educational systems and in the status of curricula documents, certain restrictions and limitations had to be taken into account when comparing and drawing inferences from the results. However, a major finding of the study is that Creativity and Innovation – the latter to a much lesser extent– effectively feature in the curricula of primary and secondary education in Europe, though major differences across countries have been observed. The report can be downloaded from the IPTS website: http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=3701

Against this background, the SmartPersonalHealth project convenes stakeholders on the afternoon of 18 January for a workshop to discuss challenges and opportunities related to the introduction of personal health systems in routine healthcare, and to review and refine policy recommendations for European, national and regional level policy makers to promote the adoption of interoperable personal health systems.

The discussions will analyse the current state of the PHS market, identify complications and issues from the view of selected professionals, and present recommended actions for regulators, national and regional decision-makers, professional stakeholders, industrial stakeholders, and patients.

SmartPersonalHealth is a project funded by the European Commission. Participation is by invitation only and free of charge. For more information please go to http://sph.continuaalliance.org/eventsBrussels.html.

 

This year the trophy and a record € 5,000 cash prize were awarded to World Health Partners (WHP) in India. This unique project fought off fierce competition to take home the coveted award. Healthcare for the Rural Poor combines basic eHealth technology with village entrepreneurs acting as facilitators to connect rural communities with formally qualified urban doctors. Using remote medical diagnostics integrated with audio-video conferencing software this project enables patients from villages to access efficient and specialised healthcare in their areas. Its private, sustained business model sets a lighthouse exemplar for the rest of the world’s telecare efforts.

The second place was awarded to Clinical Workstation (CWS), the GPS of Every Medical User presented by Rudi Van de Velde of the University Hospital Brussels (UZ Brussels), Belgium.

From Micro-Towards Macro-Mobility. Building Efficient Clinical Processes by Using a Hospital-Wide, Standardised and Near-Patient Communication Platform presented by Carl Dujat from Germany won third prize. In the first round of competition, 19 nominees – selected form 78 overall entries - introduced their projects. On the second day only nine finalists were able to present their healthcare IT and medical technology solutions to the panel of experts and the auditorium.

The IT @ Networking competition is a great learning opportunity. This year’s event promoted open discussion between competitors from across Europe and beyond. Presenters shared not only their successes but also the obstacles they encountered along the way.

The VPH NoE is a network of excellence (NoE) funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme. The network is designed to foster, harmonise and integrate pan-European research in the field of i) patient-specific computer models for personalised and predictive healthcare and ii) ICT-based tools for modelling and simulation of human physiology and disease-related processes. The VPH NoE contributes to the Virtual Physiological Human initiative – the methodological and technological framework that, once established, will enable collaborative investigation of the human body as a single complex system.

Coordinated by the University College London and the University of Oxford, the VPH NoE assembles a leading group of universities, institutes and organisations which will, by integrating their experience and ongoing activities in VPH research, promote the creation of an environment that actively supports and nurtures interdisciplinary research, education, training and strategic development.

With a VPH ToolKit – a shared and mutually accessible source of research equipment, facilities and services – empirica’s ongoing developments of highly innovative socio-economic impact assessment methodologies in the VPH projects VPHOP and NMS Physiome will add new value to the broader research community assembled by the VPH NoE. The improved exploitation and business modeling as well as policy guidance inherent to those developments can decisively contribute to the further promoting of the understanding of human physiology and pathology, to derive predictive hypotheses and simulations, develop and test new therapies, with the eventual outcome of better disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention tools for the European healthcare systems.

The VPH Network of Excellence (VPH NoE) is designed to foster, harmonise and integrate pan-European research in the field of i) patient-specific computer models for personalised and predictive healthcare and ii) ICT-based tools for modelling and simulation of human physiology and disease-related processes.

The main objectives of the VPH Network of Excellence are to support the:

• Coordination of research portfolios of VPH NoE partners through initiation of Exemplar integrative research projects that encourage inter-institution and interdisciplinary VPH research;
• Integration of research infrastructures of VPH NoE partners through development of the VPH ToolKit: a shared and mutually accessible source of research equipment, managerial and research infrastructures, facilities and services;
• Development of a portfolio of interdisciplinary training activities including a formal consultation on, and assessment of, VPH careers;
• Establishment of a core set of VPH-related dissemination and networking activities which will engage everyone from partners within the VPH NoE/other VPH projects, to national policy makers, to the public at large;
• Creation of Industrial, Clinical and Scientific Advisory Boards that will jointly guide the direction of the VPH NoE and, through consultation, explore the practical and legal options for real and durable integration within the VPH research community;
• Implementation of key working groups that will pursue specific issues relating to VPH, notably integrating VPH research worldwide through international physiome initiatives.

Finally, by involving clinical and industrial stakeholders, VPH NoE also plans to lay a reliable ground to support sustainable interactions and collaboration between research and healthcare communities.

Useful links:

http://www.vph-noe.eu/home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Physiological_Human

www.vphop.eu

www.nmsphysiome.eu

 

Contact:

Dr. Rainer Thiel (rainer.th...@...irica.com)

The eHealth Strategies project surveys and analyses national eHealth policies and the progress made in recent years. One of its foci is on eHealth related legal challenges in EU and EEA countries. Apart from outlining objectives and methodology of the overall initiative, Dr. Karl Stroetmann’s talk provided an overview of the situation across Europe concerning privacy issues and data protection. He also made recommendations for the improvement of legal frameworks and infrastructure at the international conference.

In many countries the use of eHealth is currently regulated only by the general legal framework, in particular by laws on patient rights and data protection. New legislation is often still in the process of being enacted, but slowed down by the complex legislative process in various countries. Amongst the forerunners in designing a legal framework adapted to the use of eHealth are Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Norway, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden. Almost all other countries dispose of some regulation on health data, if only through the transposition of article 8 of the EU Data Protection Directive.

The aim of the CPDP 2011 is to create a bridge between policy makers, academics, practitioners and activists. At the three-day event they can exchange ideas and discuss emerging issues of information technology, privacy, data protection and law. This year’s ambitious agenda included twelve panels, a philosophical reading panel and a PhD-evening. In total more than 150 speakers contributed.

Legal eHealth Challenges

In addition, more than 30 individual reports detailing policy actions and deployment of eHealth applications in Member States and other European countries are available there as well.

The summary report traces European countries’ progress along the goals set out in the eHealth Action Plan. It focuses on the core applications of EHR-like/patient summary and ePrescription systems. It also analyses governance, structural and legal issues as well as policy lifecycle aspects.

Study results show that in virtually all European countries surveyed, political as well as stakeholder interest in eHealth policies, and the planning and implementation of national or regional infrastructures has gained great momentum. This concerns not so much the number of new priority objectives identified, infrastructure elements tackled or pilots run, but rather the overall level of awareness, activities and concrete undertakings. EC as well as Member State initiated activities and co-operations like epSOS or the eHealth Governance Initiative have both significantly contributed to this state of affairs and are witness thereof.

As Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head of the EC’s ICT for Health Unit commented, "Europe is experiencing a strong political momentum to advance eHealth solutions for the benefit of both its citizens and health systems. The recommendations for further actions submitted in this study are based on a thorough analysis of eHealth strategies and implementation activities in European countries as well as the results of a validation workshop in September 2010 in Brussels. ... Now the challenge is to cooperatively address the issues identified."

empirica Communication and Technology Research, with more than 20 years of experience in research on eHealth and telemedicine topics, coordinated the study. The Finnish partner institute THL (National Institute for Health and Welfare, legal specialists from the law firm Time.lex and Professor Denis Protti (University of Victoria, Canada), contributed domain expertise. The study’s communication efforts and final validation workshop were supported by the communication agency EMC Consulting Group.

A host of experts as well as reviewers from the i2010 Subgroup on eHealth contributed their intimate knowledge of the eHealth situation in their respective countries and validated the content of the country reports. This comprehensive collection of country information constitutes a unique resource and important database of up to date evidence on eHealth progress across Europe, which updates and complements the results of the earlier eHealth ERA study of 2007.

By concluding the developments of the VPHOP technology assessment framework, empirica, in collaboration with all clinical and technological partners, delivered the first estimates and results of the impact assessment for the second year of the project. An innovative socio-economic and technology assessment method will continuously and dynamically evaluate the various technologies as they are being developed and refined during the course of the project. The formative layout will help guiding and focussing the research on those options which are most promising. In essence, the technology assessment method has been designed to compare the efficacy and costs of the current standard of care clinical pathway of osteoporosis with the multilayer clinical pathway (diagnosis, prognosis and treatment) developed for VPHOP by the technical partners. This comparison takes into consideration both the improvement of the accuracy in predicting bone fractures and the cost-benefit ratio of the new technology.

In November 2010, the first annual assessment was completed with very encouraging results, indicating that already minor improvements in the technology components and models of the VPHOP pathways will be sufficient to arrive at a positive cost-benefit ratio as compared to the current standard of care. As with most new medical technologies, for VPHOP technologies to benefit osteoporotic patients, extra investments will be necessary. Yet the benefits from the increased predictive accuracy, that is, additional fractures avoided, will exceed the overall costs to clinically employ the VPHOP hypermodel.

While there have been many advances in recent years in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, osteoporosis continues to be a major health threat for more than 75 million people in Europe, USA and Japan. The biggest concern for individuals with the disease is fractures, and every year osteoporosis causes more than 3,7 million in Europe. Fractures can have a profound impact on quality of life – often leading to pain, disability, loss of independence, and even death. Osteoporosis also takes a huge economic toll on both individuals and society. Fractures from osteoporosis cost the EU nearly €31.7 billion each year and that number is only going to rise as our population ages.With VPHOP, the fight against osteoporosis has a new ally. With the VPHOP socio-economic technology assessment, the project has advanced yet another step. For the remainder of VPHOP, the assessment will be applied twice within the next two years and is intended to contribute to guiding the further research developments – based on actual value for money and realistic impact potentials for the clinical management of one the most devastating conditions in Europe.

The theme of this year’s WHD is antimicrobial resistance, which is a lead topic of the European Union supported research project DebugIT. The project builds IT tools that can have significant impact on surveillance and control of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistances in Europe. The leader of the Clinical Advisory Board is Professor Didier Pittet, WHO expert on patient safety. empirica was instrumental in assembling the project consortium and is a key partner with responsibilities for impact assessment, dissemination and exploitation.

The DebugIT news page reports that according to official estimations of the WHO, every year 25,000 people in the EU die due to infectious diseases resistant to antibiotics acquired in health care settings. “Without new and effective antibiotics, but with increasing resistance, society could return to the conditions of a pre-antibiotic era”, the WHO reports. This shows the relevance and importance of research projects such as DebugIT, which have the potential to facilitate the fight against this rather gloomy scenario.

Please visit the World Health Day website and the WHO Patient Safety website for brochures, a video, press kit and posters.

 

The project’s aims are to develop an approach towards a Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) hospital reimbursement system, draft a national DRG pricing and contracting methodology for inpatient care, pilot the data collection process, train staff and finally implement the system in all hospitals. The project will strongly support the long-term reform and sustainability of healthcare services in Bosnia and Herzegovina by facilitating cost containment and, ultimately, contributing towards improved provider performance.

The new reimbursement method, based on outcomes, will provide information on cost-efficiency of the hospital sector. The DRG system will be applied at the level of secondary and tertiary health care and, extended to the entire B&H hospital sector, using existing local resources trained under this project. “Introducing the DRG system will strongly support the ongoing reform of health systems in B&H. empirica, together with its partners Karol Consulting and Ericsson Nikola Tesla, is proud to be part of this significant endeavour,” noted Dr. Rainer Thiel of empirica. The implementation of the new DRG system and the incentives that come with it are expected to lead to a more effective healthcare system and cost-efficient spending of resources, at the same time achieving better quality of services. The introduction of the DRG system is also considered as a core component of future hospital information systems.

 

Useful links:

Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina

European Commission, Directorate General Enlargement

European Commission, Directorate General EuropeAid Development and Cooperation

European Union, European External Action Service

European Union Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

Contact

Dr. Rainer Thiel (rainer.thiel at empirica.com)

 

According to the latest available official data sources, about 3,680 Qatari nationals aged 15 or older are registered as economically inactive due to disability ("unable to work"), about one third of which are at working age. The share of disabled Qataris who are economically active was 7% for women and 13% for men in 2007 (an improvement against the situation in 1997 when the figures were 3% and 12%, respectively). As in all other countries in the Arab world and beyond, employment rates for people with disabilities are substantially lower than the figures for individuals without disabilities.

It is against this background that ictQATAR - the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology and MADA- Qatar Assistive Technology Center in Qatar had asked empirica to develop and present a VOE model and blueprint for selected groups of people with disabilities in Qatar. The overall objective was to help increase the employment levels of people with special needs and disabilities in Qatar by using new forms of work organization and employment based on ICT such as teleworking and virtual office environments.

The implementation guide has been delivered in February 2011. It focuses on three types of disabilities most widespread among Qatar population with special needs, e.g. vision impairment, dyslexia (reading and writing problems), and mobility impairment and builds on the "Implementation Guide for Virtual Office Environments in Qatar" which empirica had developed for ictQATAR ictQATAR in 2010. This guide will become an integral part of the overall VOE implementation guide to help Qatari organizations to implement VOE models for the employment of people with disabilities.

Das diesjährige Schwerpunkt-Thema „Mehr Demokratie durch Informationstechnologie“ fordert dazu auf, Beiträge zum IT-Einsatz einzureichen, die die politische Partizipation der Bürger, d.h. ihre Mitwirkung an der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung und Gestaltung des Gemeinwesens fördern und ihre Durchsetzung erleichtern.

Unter den Preisträgern des Jahres 2002 waren die empirica Experten Dr. Veli Stroetmann und Dr. Karl Stroetmann, die für eine Arbeit über Telemedizin ausgezeichnet wurden.

Weitere Angaben über die Integrata-Stiftung sowie über die Preisausschreibung finden Sie auf der Website unter www.integrata-stiftung.de.

 

As part of European and global support to stabilise the Greek economy, the so-called Troika of International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU) and European Central Bank (ECB) has required the Greek Government to advance its national eHealth strategy and develop an implementation plan for ePrescription in the context of a national health information system. It is expected that this will fundamentally contribute to increased efficiency and cost savings by the Greek healthcare system. In four parallel sessions, further details to achieve fast progress on such an extended journey towards a national eHealth infrastructure were discussed. The results of the workshop will form the basis for the next steps to be undertaken.

 

For more information see: http://iap.esa.int/Useful-Resources/ASSIST

ICT has the potential to support integrated service delivery to achieve high quality independent living and wellbeing for older people across Europe and elsewhere. The conference will look beyond today's care silos at strategies, processes and business models to reach this goal.

Conference topics include:

• ICT in integrated care: from concept to practice
• Service models for integrated eCare services
• Governance and financing models for integrated eCare services
• Impact assessment

The conference will take place on 23 November 2011 in the Evoluon conference centre in Eindhoven / NL.

The conference is a joined event of the CommonWell and INDEPENDENT projects and takes place in conjunction with the Smart Home Fair "Beurs Domotica & Slim Wonen 2011".

More information, the conference programme and online registration are available on the conference website: http://www.beyond-silos.eu/.

The pilot is part of empirica-led project CommonWell and operated by project partners PoZoB and SHOKO in close cooperation with GP's from the region South-East Brabant. Patients in this pilot are equipped with telemonitoring devices to follow-up their health status, and to detect exacerbations at an early stage. The data from blood pressure meters and weight scales are sent to case managers in a call centre by using a wireless communication device. This small computer poses some more general questions to the patient as well, to evaluate how the patient feels on a more subjective level. This information is also transferred to the case managers. The combination of both objective measurements and more subjective evaluation, results in a quite complete picture of the health condition of the patient. In addition, the patients receive a social alarm, to call for help immediately and at all times. In this way the patients and their relatives have one central access point for urgent as well as non urgent social and medical care.

Patients and their social network react positively on the CommonWell service. They feel safer and more secure, because of the daily monitoring and low-threshold contact with the case managers. Quotes from patients show that they perceive the CommonWell service as a useful support to their own efforts of managing their condition and social care needs:

• "I am more involved in taking care of my health."
• "We are glad that our father is being looked after carefully. It makes us worry less and sleep better!"
• "Now I know where to go to with a social question."

In several cases, exacerbations could be detected at an early stage and countered, so that a visit to the hospital was not necessary.

In May 2011, focus group interviews with case managers took place to gather deeper insight into this new role and experience with the integration of medical and social care. The case managers were positive about the project as well. They had the feeling that this project could really detect health problems earlier due to the telemonitoring, and enhance the quality of life and care. In October 2011 GPs and other key informants will be interviewed about their experience with CommonWell. The pilot is scheduled to end in January 2012.

For more information please visit http://www.commonwell.eu/.

The conference is organised by the TSA - Telecare Services Association, the representative body for the telecare industry in the UK. Key issues addressed at this year's conference will include:

• Coping with major budget cuts
• Improving services through efficiencies and new ways of working
• Making the move from pilot to mainstream
• Making your business case using evidence based research
• Understanding the changing face of health and social care, and accessing the funding you need

Keynote speakers include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Global Ambassador for eHealth (via video); Dr Dawn Harper - GP, author and co-presenter of UK's first primetime telehealth television programme, Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic, and contributor to the BAFTA award winning website www.channel4.com/bodies; Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive, Royal College of Nursing and Jonathan D Linkous, Chief Executive, American Telemedicine Association.

The use cases that have been implemented cover a wide range of service scenarios:

• co-operation between different social care and healthcare providers to improve hospital admission and discharge of older patients in Bielefeld, Germany,
• improved communication between the social alarms call centre and the ambulance service to increase the effectiveness of emergency response in Andalucía in Spain,
• integrate social and healthcare services in Veldhoven in the Netherlands, focusing on patients with chronic heart failure, and
• early supported discharge of COPD patients in Milton Keynes in the UK.

The services will be piloted until autumn 2011.

Find the full press release here.

Dr. Karl A. Stroetmann of empirica will be one of the instructors.  In 2010, at the Young eHealth Leaders Summer Camp in Sevilla, Spain, June 15-17, 2010, which was supported by the Junta de Andalucia, Ministry of Health, he was co-organiser and part of the faculty.

The deadline for applications is 31^st October 2011.

To find out more please visit www.futureehealthleaders.org.

 

Dr. Stroetmann described how it is not innovations such as the first appearance of a new product or service in the market, but rather that it is scaling up, as in diffusion across various markets, which is the decisive factor in assuring the competitiveness of our economies.  He emphasised that such considerations need to be employed for innovation and diffusion in health systems and services as well, where new evaluation and assessment methods are desperately required.  The focus needs to shift towards the information needs of various stakeholders and the benefits and costs involved for decision makers when introducing new, complex health services facilitated by advanced ICT systems.  Dr Stroetmann believes that Health Technology Assessment (HTA) methods have so far fallen short of meeting these complex needs. He argued that, unless the requirement for more integrated healthcare service processes is better understood and new HTA methods provide the information needed by the decision makers to prove their eHealth business models, attempts to advance innovations will fail to provide the urgently needed benefits for our health systems.

 

Innovation, and diffusion in particular, are also key matters for the attention of the EU-supported Thematic Network eHealth Innovation - Scaling up eHealth facilitated personalised health services. This network, of which empirica is a key partner, develops ideas for and supports the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/deployment/ahaip/consultation/index_en.htm). It explores how to achieve in the medium-term more patient/person-centred health services, supported and facilitated by enabling innovative eHealth solutions and services. www.ehealth-innovation.eu

Der Dienstleistungssektor spielt eine wichtige Rolle in Europa. In den meisten Ländern tragen Dienstleistungen etwa 70-80% zum BIP bei und waren ein wichtiger Wachstumstreiber in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten. Ein INNO-Grips Briefing untersuchte, ob und in welcher Weise Innovationspolitik beitragen kann, dass der Dienstleistungssektor in Europa auch weiterhin wächst und zur Wohlstandssicherung beiträgt.

In der traditionellen Innovationspolitik ist die Bedeutung von innovativen Dienstleistungen nicht stark verankert; der Schwerpunkt der Förderungen ist deutlich technologielastig. Das INNO-Grips Briefing geht jedoch davon aus, dass weitere Innovationen im Dienstleistungsbereich wichtig sein werden, um das Ziel der „Europa 2020“ Strategie zu erreichen: „intelligentes, nachhaltiges und integratives Wachstum“, d.h. wirtschaftliches Wachstum unter Beachtung von ökologischen und sozialen Zielen.

Da bislang kaum Innovationspolitik speziell für den Dienstleistungsbereich gemacht wurde, gibt es auch noch so gut wie keine empirischen Befunde über die Wirksamkeit verschiedener Instrumente, etwa durch die Evaluation von Förderprogrammen. Studienautor Oliver Kovács vom ICEG European Center empfiehlt daher, dass die Europäische Kommission und die Mitgliedsstaaten ihr Augenmerk auf die Evaluation von laufenden Maßnahmen richten sollten. Diese Ergebnisse werden gebraucht um die zukünftige Politikgestaltung zu erleichtern, etwa Entscheidungen für oder gegen bestimmte Fördermaßnahmen.

Trotz der fehlenden Evaluationsergebnisse gibt die Studie eine allgemeine Empfehlung für die Ausrichtung der Politik ab. Der beste Weg, Innovation im Dienstleistungsbereich zu fördern, bestehe in der Optimierung der Rahmenbedingungen, vor allem der Beseitigung (oder zumindest Reduzierung) von Hindernissen – dies sei wesentlich wichtiger als die direkte Förderung von Innovationsaktivitäten einzelner Akteure (etwa durch Projektförderung im Rahmen von speziellen Programmen). Auch auf europäischer Ebene sollte sich die Politik vor allem auf die Optimierung der Rahmenbedingungen konzentrieren. Das gelinge allerdings nicht allein durch Innovationspolitik (im engeren Sinn), sondern erfordere die koordinierte Anstrengung verschiedener Politikbereiche, insbesondere von Wirtschafts-, Wettbewerbs-, Bildungs-, Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik.

 

Hintergrund

Das Briefing wurde im Rahmen von INNO-Grips ("Global Review of Innovation Policy Studies") erstellt. INNO-Grips ist Bestandteil des "PRO INNO Europe" Innovations-Portals (http://www.proinno-europe.eu) der Europäischen Kommission. Das INNO-Grips Projekt wird von empirica koordiniert und in Zusammenarbeit mit ICEG European Center sowie weiteren internationalen Forschungspartnern durchgeführt, auf Basis eines Vertrags mit der GD Unternehmen und Industrie der Europäischen Kommission. Der Vertrag läuft bis Ende 2012.

Das vollständige Briefing ist auf der INNO-Grips Website (in englischer Sprache) verfügbar:

http://www.proinno-europe.eu/innogrips/innovation-policy-briefs

Based on this analysis, and with input from European experts on ePrescription legal, technical and semantic challenges, guidelines will be drafted, validated, refined and delivered to the European Commission. Initial results are expected in the second half of 2012. Final results will be presented in the fall of 2013.

Six contributions explored and exemplified the virtualisation of the human body, and its relevance and potential impact on future medicine and healthcare.

Annually, this high level symposium assembles actors from medicine, the sciences, engineering, social sciences and politics to discuss latest developments in high tech medicine in the congenial ambience of a small baroque palace.

Dr. Karl Stroetmann of empirica in Bonn, Germany, presented global developments, ranging from the  beginnings of integrative systems biology and first simulation models 50 years ago to the global Physiome project and the European "Virtual Physiological Human" Initiative. His talk on "The Virtual Physiological Human - from the European Research Initiative to Clinical Practice (The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) – Von der europäischen Forschungsinitiative zur klinischen Praxis)" (Link: pdf of his slides, see attached) referred to two European Framework Programme 7 (FP7) projects to illustrate the recent progress made towards transferring basic research results to a pre-clinical environment with the perspective, to radically transform in the medium term clinical practice in the medical field of osteoporosis prediction, diagnosis and treatment. These are the Osteoporotic VPH (VPHOP) Project, concerned with multiscale modelling to fight osteoporotic fractures, and its trans-Atlantic sister project, NMS Physiome - Personalised models of the neuromusculosceletal system -www.nmsphysiome.eu/, with its  partners, the: European VPHOP consortium and SIMBIOS - Stanford University -  USA National Center for Biomedical Computing  simbios.stanford.edu/, part of the USA National Institutes of Health  www.nih.gov/ NIH Roadmap for Medical Research.

The  Future eHealth Leaders Summer Camp will take place from 21^st -15^th February 2012 in Cape Town, South Africa.  The camp will introduce participants to eHealth professionals from a number of countries and allow participants to support one another in creating personal development plans that will enhance the leading of eHealth initiatives.

The Future eHealth Leaders Summer Camp provides a unique learning experience outside of familiar settings. It promotes collaboration between diverse countries and regions, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. This provides participants with rich opportunities and inspiration by linking with experienced colleagues who work in vastly different contexts and circumstances.  Applications have already been received from South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

For more information about the Future eHealth Leaders Summer Camp  please go to: http://futureehealthleaders.org/about2012.php.

SMEs will compete first at national level. The champion of each country will then enter into the European Final, to be celebrated during eHealth Week 2012 in Copenhagen (Denmark) on the 7th May 2012. The organiser is looking for country coordinators to support competition management. Eligible coordinators must be business associations (clusters, national platforms, technological centers, business centers, etc) with a proven interest in eHealth. They will receive a number of benefits from their involvement.

For more information and registration, follow this link.

Deadline for expressions of interest: 20th of November.

 

TICBioMed is an eHealth business cluster located in Murcia (Spain). The cluster co-leads Coordina2, a national network of eHealth intermediate organisations.

For information on the ICT for Health unit: http://ec.europa.eu/ehealth

For information on the eHealth Week: www.ehealthweek.org

empirica co-ordinates the Knowledge Transfer Study on behalf of the European Commission's Directorate General Research and Innovation. The purpose of the workshops is monitoring the implementation of the European Commission's Recommendation on intellectual property management in knowledge transfer from 2008 and to discuss related issues. The workshops offered lively forums for discussing country-specific barriers to knowledge transfer, governmental policies and examples of good practice. They revealed the increasing importance of knowledge transfer and intellectual management in Europe at both political level and the level of universities and public research institutes. On average, more than 50 knowledge transfer experts from universities, public research institutes, governmental organisations and business took part in the workshops. Presentations and summeries are availabe on the workshops' websites.

In 2011, empirica organised the following ten workshops:

Berlin, 8 February: Germany.
In co-operation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Vienna, 10 March: Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein.
In co-operation with the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research.

Maastricht, 10 May: Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg.
In co-operation with the United Nations University, Maastricht.

Gothenburg, 1 June: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland.
In co-operation with the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communication.

Dublin, 15 July: Ireland, United Kingdom, Malta.
In co-operation with NovaUCD, Dublin.

Tallinn, 6 September: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
In co-operation with the Baltic Dynamics 2011 Conference.

Rome, 30 September: Italy.
In co-operation with ProTon Europe, Netval and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development.

Warsaw, 3 November.: Poland.
In co-operation with the Polish Ministry for Science and Education.

Paris, 8 November: France.
In co-operation with the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

Porto, 14.11.: Portugal, Spain
In co-operation with the University Technology Enterprise Network Portugal.

In 2012, five further workshops will take place, including further 16 countries in the South-East of Europe. The dates will be announced at the study's website.

The conference was opened by Mary-Ann Schreurs, vice-mayor of the city of Eindhoven who reminded people not only that the things they are doing have to be seen in the wider context of the societal changes of our time. She also emphasised that real action, “real-life service implementation” in the words of some of the conference attendees, is now required because pilot projects are only the first step and “the easy part” on the way to making integrated care a reality for all Europeans. Peter Wintlev-Jensen of the European Commission’s Directorate General Information Society and second opening speaker said that the issue of integrated care, and the role technology can play, is integral part of political and funding activities at the European level already today and considered to become ever more important in the future.

Through a series of excellent key notes and project presentations, conference attendees got a good impression of what is going on in the field of integrated eCare and not least how many different types of activities can be subsumed under this one heading: ranging from integration within the boundaries of health care to integration across various fields of social and health care. “Silos within silos”, as Michael Rigby, Professor emeritus of Keele University named the challenge in his visionary and inspiring keynote. Through a series of three break-out sessions the conference participants could not only listen to what others are doing but contribute their own experiences and views as well. In engaging and far-ranging discussions issues such as service requirements, governance and financing models and impact assessment were further developed, allowing people to position themselves in relation to activities going on all over Europe. A panel discussion in the end not only brought together key stakeholders active in the domain – from IT industry to policy makers and service providers – but also allowed the conference attendees to collect the various strands of discussion and to depart with a good understanding of what is going on today and with an idea of what the future might bring.

The conference was organized jointly by two projects that are currently piloting services for integrated eCare at ten sites all over Europe: CommonWell and INDEPENDENT. Both projects (co-funded under the European Commission’s CIP programme and coordinated by empirica) hoped in that way not only to share some of their experiences but also to create a focal point to bring together those stakeholders that are active in this fledgling field.

Conference presentations and a video will be made available through the conference website in the coming weeks: http://www.beyond-silos.eu/. More information about the two projects can also be found online, please visit http://www.independent-project.eu/ and http://www.commonwell.eu/.

Mehr Demokratie durch Informationstechnologie

fordert dazu auf, Beiträge zum IT-Einsatz einzureichen, die die politische Partizipation der Bürger, d.h. ihre Mitwirkung an der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung und Gestaltung des Gemeinwesens fördern und ihre Durchsetzung erleichtern.

Die Integrata-Stiftung wirbt dafür, die Informationstechnologie nicht nur zur Rationalisierung und Funktionalisierung der Lebens- und Arbeitsprozesse zu nutzen, sondern zur Schaffung eines gesellschaftlichen Mehrwerts, d.h. zur Verbesserung der Lebensqualität möglichst vieler Menschen in allen Regionen der Welt. Sie ist in diesem Sinne "sozial" orientiert und erst in zweiter Linie technisch. Die Informationstechnologie wird ganz bewusst als Werkzeug gesehen, mit dessen Hilfe es gelingen soll, die Welt im Großen und im Kleinen menschenwürdiger, d.h. humaner zu gestalten. Weitere Angaben über die Integrata-Stiftung sowie über die Preisausschreibung finden Sie auf der Website unter www.integrata-stiftung.de.

www.eskills-vision.eu

www.eskills-quality.eu

www.smartspaces.eu

His contribution on "Globalisation and Innovations in (e)Health – Opportunities and Challenges for the EU and USA" concisely outlined these topics and identified pragmatic next steps to invigorate the transatlantic exchange for the benefits of both European and USA ICT industry, healthcare systems and, most importantly, citizens everywhere.

It presents and summarizes the achievements of researchers around the globe and from diverse technical backgrounds. They use a wide range of approaches to optimize the use of healthcare technology and integrate such technology into human lives in a way that will benefit all. The book is divided into seven main sections: AAL in the health space; Devices and infrastructure to facilitate AAL; AAL in gerontology; Smart homes as a vehicle for AAL; Applications of AAL in rehabilitation; AAL initiatives; and Novel developments and visions for the area.

Among many other interesting articles it congtains a chapter on AAL markets that is partly based on empirica experiences made in various projects

The book is available in print and online format from IOS press...

"Die frühe Einbeziehung echter Patienten in den Technologie-Entwicklungsprozess ist ausgesprochen wichtig, nicht nur um wissenschaftlichen Mehrwert zu erzielen, sondern auch damit die Forschungsergebnisse in die tatsächliche klinische Praxis sowie in nachhaltig funktionierende klinische Arbeitsabläufe übertragen werden können. Als Leiter des klinischen Teils des Projektarbeitsplans bin ich stolz, den Abschluss der klinischen Studie bekanntgeben zu können: dies bedeutet einen großen Fortschritt für das Projekt", teilt René Rizzoli mit.  "Die individualisierte VPHOP-Modellierungstechnologie ist dabei, eine wahrhaft auf den Patienten zugeschnittene, Vorhersagen erlaubende Vorgehensweise gegen die Krankheit zu entwickeln", führt Professor Rizzoli weiterhin aus,  "Damit sollte sich die Genauigkeit der Einschätzung des Risikos für Osteoporose-bedingte Knochenbrüche erheblich steigern lassen, da die verschiedenen metabolischen, anatomischen, biomechanischen und neuromotorischen Einflußfaktoren des Patienten auf integrierte Weise berücksichtigt werden".

 

Zusätzlich zur Erhebung der klinischen Grunddaten für die Technologiebewertung hat jedes der klinischen Zentren innovative Verfahren eingeführt, mit denen auch die speziellen Aspekte der diversen VPHOP Modellierungstechnologien untersucht werden. In diesen Verfahren spielen speziell von den VPHOP Industriepartnern entwickelte Produkte eine Rolle, wie z.B. Actibelt, ein "intelligenter" Gürtel, oder das EOS QT Abbildungssystem, das als Forschungsprototyp von EOS Imaging (tm) angefertigt wurde. EOS Imaging wurde vom Physik-Nobelpreisträger G. Charpak gegründet, und hat ein umfassendes orthopädisches Abbildungssystem entwickelt, das die simultane Erstellung zweier Ganzkörper-Röntgenbilder bei sehr geringer Strahlungsdosis ermöglicht und dadurch eine dreidimensionale Abbildung der Knochen-Ummantelung des Skeletts in Körpergewichts- tragender Position erstellt. Das Verfahren stellt automatisch über hundert klinische Parameter für die Planung sowohl vor als auch nach einer Operation zur Verfügung. Auf diesem bereits verfügbaren Produkt basierend wurde im Rahmen des VPHOP Projekts ein Forschungsprototyp entwickelt, der auch die Knochen-Mineralien-Dichte erfasst. In Kombination mit den Daten aus dem individuellen 3D Skelett-Mantel-Bild wird der EOS-QT Prototyp letztlich die Einbindung der 3D Dichtemessung in das VPHOP Hypermodell ermöglichen.

Dieses ganze Arsenal an Mess- und Bildgebungsverfahren, das unter anderem auch eine hochauflösende Abbildungstechnik für das Knochengewebe des Achsenskeletts (entwickelt von Industriepartner Philips Medical Systems) und eine fortschrittliche Model-Morphing-Technologie von Industriepartner Ansys einschließt, ist von wesentlicher Bedeutung für eine nachhaltige, individualisierte Informationsverwaltung im klinischen Alltag. Im Zentrum des Projekts stehen allerdings die Hypermodellierungs-Technologie des Partners SCS und die weltweit beispielslosen, von den akademischen Projektpartnern entwickelten Vorhersage-Modelle auf Körper-, Organ-, Gewebe- und Körperzellen-Ebene.

Im Moment ist das Konsortium dabei, die verschiedenen Modellierungstechnologien in das übergreifende Hypermodell-Konzept zu integrieren. Dieser Prozess soll bis April 2012 abgeschlossen werden.

In den darauffolgenden letzten sechs Monaten des VPHOP Projekts sollen dann die Daten der obengenannten 200 Patienten so wie auch diejenigen vieler weiterer Patienten im Rahmen der projektzugehörigen retrospektiven Studien mithilfe der VPHOP Hypermodellierungs-Technologie analysiert werden.

"Wir sind überzeugt, dass das VPHOP Projekt mit seinem wahrscheinlichkeitsbasierten, personalisierten Multiscale-Modelling-Framework sowohl in der Erforschung des Neuro-Muskel-Skelett-Apparats als auch in der computerbasierten  Pathophysiologie weltweite Maßstäbe setzt", so Marco Viceconti, der Koordinator des VPHOP Projekts.

Weitere Informationen zu VPHOP:

VPHOP oder Osteoporotic Virtual Physiological Human ist ein Europa-weites Osteoporose-Forschungsprojekt und Teil der Virtual Physiological Human Initiative. Das Projekt wird von der Europäischen Union bezuschusst durch das 7th Framework Programme der Generaldirektion Forschung. Bis August 2012 entwickelt, validiert und implementiert das VPHOP Projekt  eine neue Generation von Technologien zur Vorhersage des absoluten Risikos für Knochenbrüche bei Patienten mit niedriger Dichte der Knochenmasse. Dadurch sollen den Ärzten bessere Prognose-Möglichkeiten sowie bessere Behandlungsstrategien (auf pharmakologischer wie behandlungstechnischer Seite) ermöglicht werden.

Das Ziel des VPHOP Projekts ist es, eine auf konventionellen diagnostischen Abbildungsverfahren basierende Multiscale-Modellierungs-Technologie zu entwickeln, die es in einem klinischen Umfeld ermöglicht, für alle Patienten die individuelle Festigkeit ihrer Knochen zu berechnen, zudem die Art und Weise, wie sich dieser Wert wahrscheinlich in Zukunft entwickeln wird, sowie die Wahrscheinlichkeit, mit der die Patienten ihre Knochen im täglichen Leben überbeanspruchen werden. Mithilfe dieser drei Vorhersagewerte kann auch das absolute Risiko eines Knochenbruchs wesentlich genauer vorhergesagt werden als durch die äußerlichen und indirekten Bestimmungsgrößen, die in der herkömmlichen klinischen Praxis verwendet werden.

Links zum Thema:

http://www.vphop.eu/

http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/vphop/reception/media/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Physiological_Human

His contribution on “Globalisation and Innovations in (e)Health – Opportunities and Challenges for the EU and USA” concisely outlined these topics and identified pragmatic next steps to invigorate the transatlantic exchange for the benefits of both European and USA ICT industry, healthcare systems and, most importantly, citizens everywhere.

This year's HCist'2012 - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies - will be held in Algarve, Portugal, from 3 to 5 October, 2012. Under the leitmotiv of leveraging health and social care through people, processes and information systems, academics, scientists, healthcare IT professionals, managers and solution providers from all over the world will have the opportunity to share experiences, bring new ideas, debate issues, and introduce the latest developments in this multidisciplinary field embraced by HCist. Recently, Dr. Karl A. Stroetmann of empirica was asked to join the Scientific Programme Committee of the conference.

For more details on the conference, please consult the website at http://hcist.eiswatch.org and the Call for papers, submission deadline is April 14, 2012. All full papers will be published in the conference proceedings (with ISBN). Papers can also be accepted as posters, with an extended abstract to be published in a book of abstracts (with ISBN). Authors of selected papers will be invited to extend the paper for possible publication in international journals and edited books. Submissions will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Only original contributions will be accepted.