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Welcome to the Med-e-Tel newsletter!
This newsletter is your source for Med-e-Tel updates, news from the Med-e-Tel partners, exhibitors and speakers, as well as other telemedicine and ehealth news from around the world.
We look forward to seeing you at Med-e-Tel 2008 on April 16-18 in Luxembourg. For Med-e-Tel 2008 program details and registration, go to www.medetel.lu. Avoid queuing at the entrance, and submit your registration in advance! To benefit from negotiated rates, make hotel reservations now for your stay in Luxembourg during Med-e-Tel 2008. Several hotels and/or dates are nearly fully booked! Click here for hotel information and reservation form. |
Featured Partner
The World Academy of Biomedical Technologies (WABT) is an NGO in relations and cooperation with UNESCO activities and programs. WABT is one of the members of International Council for Engineering and Technology (ICET).
The objective of the Academy is to create a forum where scientists, engineers, doctors and industrial leaders can exchange views in a cooperative manner to assist in discoveries and transfer of information in the field of biomedical technologies, for the benefit of mankind.
One important purpose of the Academy is to promote and coordinate activities related to the development of techniques in the field of healthcare, so as to provide advanced and suitable treatments, consistent with a well defined code of ethics.
WABT will coordinate a meeting of the UNESCO Space for Science Project during Med-e-Tel 2008, and will also present a session on micro and nano technology for biomedical applications.
Med-e-Tel works together with a distinguished academy of organizations, associations and institutions who are active in the fields of ehealth, telemedicine, and health ICT.
Click here for a full list of supporting organizations and partners. |
Featured Media Partners
Health Business (HB) deals with the 'business end' of NHS and Private Sector requirements. The magazine forms a unique 'bridge' between those providing healthcare and those private sector companies that wish to service their needs.
HB's pages contain need-to-know features, news and case studies that explain the administrative and commercial issues affecting healthcare and hospital management.
IOS Press services a variety of scientific and medical communities in all parts of the world. At Med-e-Tel, IOS Press will present information about the Technology and Health Care and Technology and Disability journals, as well as the book series on Assistive Technology Research and Studies in Health Technology and Informatics.
Healthcare IT Management is the official voice of the European Association of Healthcare IT Managers. It connects CIOs, IT managers, specialists and practitioners in the healthcare IT sector (hospitals, private and public clinics, healthcare institutes) across Europe, it deals with the most pressing topics in health IT, and combats the fragmentation that characterizes the European market of healthcare IT.
Telemedicine and e-Health
covers high quality cutting-edge papers on telemedicine applications in medicine and public health. In 2008, Telemedicine and e-Health expanded coverage, publishing 10 issues per year, providing readers with an understanding of new technology applications and evidence-based usage, and a new section on Medical Connectivity. This new section includes roundtables, initiatives in industry, tutorials, webwatch, commentaries, new services, and people in the news.
The Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare provides excellent coverage of developments in telemedicine and e-health. Contributions from around the world provide a unique perspective on how different countries and health systems are using new technology in health care. Sections within the journal include technology updates, editorials, original articles, research tutorials, educational material, review articles and reports from various telemedicine organisations.
The Med-e-Tel media partnerships provide you with a look at a wide range of healthcare and medical journals, magazines and on-line news and information services that will help you to stay abreast of what is going on in the field of ehealth, telemedicine and healthcare IT and to make better informed decisions in your daily business or healthcare practice.
Pick up your personal copy of these publications in the Media Corner at Med-e-Tel 2008! |
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International telenursing working group formation
 Loretta Schlachta-Fairchild (USA) will comment during the Med-e-Tel 2008 opening session (April 16th) on the draft purpose, scope and objectives for an
international telenursing working group, currently in the process of formation
under collaboration between the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH) and the International Council of Nurses
(ICN).
The ICN is a federation of
national nurses' associations, representing nurses in more than 128
countries and has recently published a report on International Competencies for Telenursing.
The ISfTeH, with its
prominent history of advancing international telemedicine and ehealth, has
achieved a hallmark event in its designation as an NGO in official relation with the World Health Organization, which will
empower nurses and physicians around the world to put telemedicine and ehealth
tools in the hands of those who are tending to their citizens' healthcare
needs.
A 2004-2005 International Telenursing Survey indentified 719 nurses from 36 countries who were actively working in telenursing roles. Given the worldwide nursing shortage and the global shift in demographics to ageing and chronic illness, it is paramount that nurses embrace technology as a resource multiplier.
Nurses from any country are
invited to participate in the working group that is under formation, if they have an interest in or are
currently engaged in using telehealth/telemedicine/ehealth technologies in any
capacity.
Loretta Schlachta-Fairchild is a nurse,
healthcare administrator and expert in telehealth, telemedicine and
telenursing. She is founder, president and CEO of iTelehealth Inc., providing
telehealth expertise in home settings and disease management. Dr. Schlachta-Fairchild will also be involved in the Telenursing session that will be part of the Med-e-Tel conference program and that will provide further information and strategies to those interested in advancing their practice in this arena. For program details, go to www.medetel.lu. |
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Open eHealth Foundation to provide solid basis for interoperability  eHealth specialist InterComponentWare (ICW) has recently joined Agfa HealthCare and Sun Microsystems, Inc. as foundation member of the new Open eHealth Foundation, an open source initiative that is unique in the healthcare IT arena. The Open eHealth Foundation will provide software components under an open source license that will boost the open standards-based exchange of medical information.
The ehealth market is set for explosive growth. This demand is driven by growing challenges to healthcare systems in industrialized societies, as well as new medical information and communication technologies. In order to capitalize on the huge market potential and to improve medical care, interoperability of electronic medical records and personal health records by different vendors is critical.
The founding members of the Open eHealth Foundation have recognized the necessity to:
- Create a worldwide community-driven software development platform to speed up the digitization of the healthcare industry.
- Enable members and healthcare organizations to create compelling solutions based on existing global clinical and administrative standards, and increase interoperability with a wide array of third-party components and platforms.
Specifically, the foundation aims to leverage existing open source projects to develop a platform that enables its members and health organizations to build free open source software components and reference implementations to help achieve a high degree of semantic interoperability in the global ehealth sector based on open standards. In this process, the Open eHealth Foundation will not develop new standards for interoperability. The Foundation will instead cooperate with existing standard-developing organizations to implement the standards already defined into the Foundation's open source components. The foundation will also provide reference implementations for these healthcare standards. The
healthcare oriented components will initially include services for patient consent management, virtual patient records, patient information management and services for a standardized users, roles and relations management.
Thomas Liebscher, CTO of ICW, comments: "As an eHealth specialist with almost ten years of market experience, we learned a long time ago that monolithic systems cannot satisfy the connectivity needs of all target groups in the healthcare sector. Instead, enabling existing systems to exchange medical information will provide completely new possibilities for
healthcare."
Additional information on the Open eHealth Foundation is available at www.openehealth.org. Or meet InterComponentWare representatives at Med-e-Tel 2008 and attend their presentation on "Consumerism in Telehealth" on Wednesday April 16th (see www.medetel.lu for program details).
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Near Field Communication (NFC) for patient interfaces in telemonitoring solutions  For several years already, the eHealth systems team that is part of the biomedical engineering department of the Austrian Research Centers (ARC) has pioneered the utilisation of mobile phones in support of the treatment of a variety of chronic diseases like hypertension, heart failure, diabetes and obesity.
To overcome still existing barriers between patients and the telemonitoring infrastructure, a Near Field Communication (NFC) technology based patient interface has been developed and is now being marketed. NFC is a wireless short-range communication standard. Patients can read out data from NFC enabled medical devices simply by "touching" them with NFC enabled mobile phones (by bringing them close together within a range of a few centimetres) - without the necessity of prior pairing.
Initial experience indicates that NFC could turn out to be a breakthrough in terms of an "easy to use" and "easy to learn" telemonitoring solution in the management of chronic diseases.
Being present at three locations in Austria (Graz, Hall in Tirol and
Vienna) eHealth systems/ARC focus on R&D in the fields of medical informatics and
telemedicine. An interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers
develop information and communication technology based solutions for
current challenges in the healthcare system.
eHealth systems will exhibit the latest NFC developments at Med-e-Tel 2008. Additionally, in the course of the educational program, they will present papers on NFC as an enabling technology and on the utilisation of mobile phones for teledermatology applications.
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SAS business intelligence for healthcare at Med-e-Tel 2008
 Many hospitals worldwide use SAS software to improve their quality of care, productivity and patient/staff relations...to enable better and more informed decisions...and to drive their organizations forward.
SAS addresses the entire process of translating raw data into useful, trusted and timely information for evidence-based decisions. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW® how to improve:
Visit SAS at Med-e-tel, exhibit space 1C-47, and attend the presentation of SAS customer, the University Hospital of Aachen (April 17th, Conference Room 5), who will explain how SAS offers internal efficiencies, better resource management, reduced debt servicing and other financial benefits. |
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eHIT Health Gateway as mobile extension of existing telemedicine systems 
Modern measuring devices for home and personal use, such as blood pressure or ECG meters, produce precise and correct data. Thanks to home monitoring, patients have the possibility of being safely discharged from hospitals and still being followed up during their recovery and recuperation.
"The secure, automatic and real-time transfer and integration of such home-generated measurement values into the patient data system is often a challenge" says Kalevi Voutilainen, Managing Director of Finland based company eHIT. "Thanks to the Health Gateway, data is automatically available not only to the patient but also to the physician in real-time and in the correct form."
eHIT's Health Gateway is an effective and secure tool, which transfers measured values from the patient's home to the doctor's desk, through a mobile platform and wireless GSM, GPRS or 3G network.
The Health Gateway can be easily integrated into existing information systems bringing the benefits of modern telemedicine to well-established solutions already in use in clinics and health care centres. This way the whole pattern of medical devices already interfaced to the Health Gateway becomes available to the host system as a precise and reliable source of information. Remote monitoring of blood glucose, blood pressure, PEF, body weight, coagulation value and many other measurements including ECG and EMG is then available in real time to health care personnel for immediate analysis.
Health Gateway also supports a bidirectional communication offering the physicians the possibility of sending instant feedback in a secure way directly to the mobile phone of the patient.
To know more about the different integration possibilities offered by the Health Gateway, visit eHIT at Med-e-Tel on the ISfTeH exhibition stand. And attend the eHIT presentation on "A Mobile Telemedicine Solution Offering More Comfort and Privacy in Stress Urinary Incontinence Treatment" as part of the "Telehealth in Support of Self Care in the 21st Century" conference session on April 17th. |
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European eHealth Procurers Forum launched
 The new eHealth Procurers Forum at ePractice.eu is an initiative sponsored by the European Commission to help practitioners in health electronic procurement in Europe to meet and share their experiences and knowledge, to ask and provide support. The community is open to practitioners from European national and regional administrations, from public and private organisations, from academia and research centres.
The eHealth Procurers Forum is an open space to express opinions and exchange knowledge and where members are encouraged to provide contributions and participate in the discussions and events. It is not an official Commission site.
The community is mainly focused on technical and organisational aspects of eHealth Procurement.
Meet European Commission representatives from the DG Information Society (INFSO) and from the DG Health and Consumer Protection (SANCO) on the Med-e-Tel exhibition and find out more about the latest Commission activities in ehealth. EC representatives Nick Fahy (DG SANCO) and Michael Palmer (DF INFSO) will also provide an update on "eHealth and Public Health in the European Context" and on "Telemedicine and Innovative ICT for Chronic Disease Management" during the Med-e-Tel opening session on Wednesday April 16th.
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Space for health  The European Space Agency (ESA) has set up a new website on "Space for Health". Space is playing an increasing role to support health on Earth. This website, aimed at citizens, healthcare professionals, industry, and researchers, provides an overview of what space can do in the area of health and an overview of the different space assets.
In diagnosis and treatment for instance, satellite communications can provide the means to realize remote medical diagnosis and enhanced homecare, while human space exploration facilitates the development of innovative techniques and measures.
In the field of satellite telecommunications several applications and services are already providing isolated populations with access to healthcare and medical practitioners with second opinions or additional support (e.g. tele-diagnosis in the absence of local expertise; health monitoring to enhance homecare, mobility, and autonomy of ageing population).
In the field of human space exploration the development of innovative medical instrumentation is generated either for remote medical diagnosis, or for countermeasures against deleterious physiological effects (e.g. the effects of micro-gravity on the human organism is similar to that of patients suffering from reduced mobility).
Not only do satellite communications and R&D in human space exploration each contribute towards better healthcare for the citizens on Earth, but combining these assets enables the provision of such services without geographical limitation.
ESA is also a supporter of the UNESCO "Space for Science" project, in the frame of which, the World Academy for Biomedical Technologies (WABT) will coordinate a meeting with project partners during Med-e-Tel 2008.
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Newsbriefs To follow are links to some interesting and recently published articles, studies and reports (if you would like to suggest an article for inclusion into a following newsletter, feel free to send details to info@medetel.lu):
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