| TMA-Bridge Session well received at Medetel 2005 |  |  | | |
TMA-Bridge Session well received at Medetel 2005
31 March 2005
Medetel, the International Trade Event and Conference for eHealth, Telemedicine and Health, was held 6th-8th April 2005 at LuxExpo in Luxembourg. Several Telemedicine Alliance (TMA) team members were actively involved as speakers in this yearly event.
After the opening ceremony, the TMA-Team chaired a 2.5-hour plenary session titled “Trans-National Interoperability in eHealth: Facing the Challenges and Overcoming the Barriers”.
At 11:00, after the opening speeches, TM Alliance will chair a session titled: “Trans-National Interoperability in eHealth: Facing the Challenges and Overcoming the Barriers”. The TMA team and invited participants from the recently held eHealth Interoperability Workshop at ESTEC on 18-19 March 2005, will be presenting their findings. The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion made up of the presenters and invited key persons.
TMA-Bridge Session at Medetel
The session presented a coherent picture of interoperability in eHealth, with examples across the various types of services, and analyses of the challenges and roadblocks to eHealth implementation, identifying the gaps, and concretely recommending the way ahead. The approach was holistic, viewing the problems of technical interoperability along the different frameworks, such as organisational, cultural and policy. Moreover, the emphasis was trans-national because the strategic aim of the project is that the various systems now being developed in the different countries and regions can communicate with each other. An important result would be that eHealth solutions and applications created in Europe will also have a broad trans-national market for applications; and that the European citizen, patient, health practitioner may receive and provide services across national borders.
Linking broad topics such as technical standards and semantics with certification, accreditation, organisation, reimbursement and even cultural differences, the presentations fitted well together painting a complete picture of the domain of eHealth and the interoperability barriers being faced. The team also offered recommendations, which if followed, should lower the barriers to realization of citizen-centred eHealth. Following the presentation, the audience (around 75 persons from industry, governments, healthcare authorities, and research institutions, from all continents) participated actively with the speakers in a panel discussion.
11h00 - 13h00 - Presentations:
- TMA-Bridge: “Laying the Foundations for Citizen-Centred eHealth” - James Kass
- eCare: “Providing eHealth for the Mobile Citizen” – Niels Rossing
- eHealth Standards: "Communicating Across Borders" - Gunnar Klein
- eAdmin: “Administration is not Boring” - Stephan Schug
- eSurveillance: “Preparing a European Response to Health Risks”– James Kass
- eEducation: “Citizens Informing Themselves about eHealth”– Clive Tristram
- "A common umbrella for I2-Health, TMA-Bridge and related projects" - Stephan Schug
- "European eHealth in a WHO perspective" - JC Healy
13h00 - 13h30 - Panel Discussion:
“Putting It All Together”– Moderator: Niels Rossing
The Way Forward
The presentations looked at the requirements for establishing the groundwork for removing the barriers to interoperability between systems and made recommendations on how to proceed along the road to successful eHealth implementation in Europe.
After its session, the TMA-Team was approached by many participants seeking collaboration and sharing information with our team. The enthusiastic response confirmed the success of the session.
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