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Med-e-Tel Newsletter
This newsletter is your source for Med-e-Tel updates, news from the Med-e-Tel partners, sponsors, exhibitors and speakers, as well as other telemedicine and ehealth news from around the world.
Med-e-Tel 2010 is just around the corner (April 14-16). If you are coming over there, we look forward to meeting with you and hearing about your telemedicine and ehealth activities and projects. Check out the latest updates to the Med-e-Tel 2010 conference program at www.medetel.eu.
Click here for venue information and travel directions. Registrationcan still be done today or over the weekend. Or on-site upon arrival at the event. Past newsletterscontain more information about some of the exhibitors, partners and sessions that will be part of the Med-e-Tel conference. In this newsletter you'll find details of a presentation from Dr. Malcolm Fisk (Telecare Services Association) that is scheduled for the opening plenary session on day 2 of Med-e-Tel 2010. The presentation will deal with the emerging evidence for telehealth interventions.
Other news includes the presentation of Joseph Dal Molin, open source expert, on the free/libre open source software (FLOSS) paradigm shift. This presentation is scheduled for the Med-e-Tel opening session on April 14th.
This newsletter also reports on technological solutions and projects from the Austrian Institute of Technology, THOR Medical Systems, Tiani Spirit/eHealth Business Services, and Leuven Medical Technology Centre, that will all be featured and presented at Med-e-Tel 2010.
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Featured Partner
Med-e-Tel is proud to be endorsed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Health. Med-e-Tel 2010 will be opened officially on April 14th in the presence of Luxembourg Minister of Health Mars Di Bartolomeo.
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
Healthcare Executive, the healthcare professionals magazine, is a Belgian newsmagazine directed to healthcare and pharmaceutical professionals, featuring opinion pieces from healthcare experts, review of regulatory issues and new legislation, management tips, and evaluation of new technologies, in order to support managers in their strategic decisions.
Healthcare IT News International provides monthly news on all major healthcare IT developments, trends and issues around the globe. Complete with coverage of annual international conferences such as Med-e-Tel, this newsletter is a must for all readers looking to stay current on global healthcare IT initiatives. Sign up to Healthcare IT News International updates.
IGI Global is the leading publisher of computer science and information technology management books, journals, cases, and databases. Providing comprehensive coverage on the role of technology in biomedical and healthcare research and practice, their newest imprint, Medical Information Science Reference, offers cutting-edge collections of vital interest to biomedical and healthcare professionals.
The Latin American Journal of Telehealth aims to strengthen the dissemination of telehealth experiences that are underway in Latin America and other international experiences that may contribute to the strengthening and development in telehealth actions on the continent.
Technology and Health Care covers the overlapping areas between physics, engineering, informatics on the one hand and human biology, basic medical sciences, clinical medicine on the other. It also presents a forum for the discussion of socio-economic aspects related to medical technology.
Telemeditalia is a monthly journal which focuses on eHealth, telemedicine, homecare and health technologies in general. The webjournal is widely read by doctors and other health professionals, as well as by health institutions.
World Pharma News is one of the world's leading web-based pharmaceutical news publications. Our subscribers are continuously informed about the latest and most prominent worldwide pharmaceutical news.
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 2010! |
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Global telemedicine and eHealth initiatives take center stage next week at Med-e-Tel 2010
 Med-e-Tel 2010 is just around the corner, taking place next week (April 14-16) at the Luxexpo Exhibition and Congress Center in Luxembourg.
Below are links and information that will be of help to explore the extensive conference program and to plan your participation: You can still register online today or over the weekend.
Registration will also still be possible upon arrival at the event next
week.
*Check on-site listings for last minute updates and changes
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The emerging evidence for telehealth interventions: a UK perspective 
Dr. Malcolm Fisk, Chair of the Telecare Services Association (TSA) in the UK, will address the morning plenary session on Thursday April 15th at Med-e-Tel 2010, to provide an overview of various UK telehealth initiatives and the evidence drawn from them. There are indeed a rapidly growing number of initiatives that relate to telehealth - most notably in Europe and North America. They provide for people's needs ranging from diabetes and epilepsy to chronic heart conditions and dementia. The initiatives respond to developments in technologies and are frequently based on new service configurations. But the rapidity of developments in technologies means that there is, arguably, a dearth of evidence regarding the merits of telehealth and there is, at the same time, uncertainly regarding the ways in which the technological and service opportunities should be harnessed. Evidence from over 30 studies of telehealth initiatives has been drawn together in work for Medilink West Midlands (a not for profit organization in the UK). "The evidence offers a mixed picture of the benefits of telehealth and points to key differences that link to the mode of service delivery and the varying needs and views of different users," according to Malcolm Fisk. His presentation will explore that 'mixed picture' and, in so doing, will propose some key parameters that could usefully guide future telehealth initiatives in order for the benefits for different users to be maximized. |
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The FLOSS paradigm shift - transforming healthcare through rapid, evidence driven software innovation  The Med-e-Tel 2010 opening session will feature Joseph Dal Molin, a recognized expert in open source and information technology strategy, with a presentation of the "FLOSS paradigm shift" (Free/Libre Open Source Software). The presentation will highlight how the FLOSS model brings a fundamental and desperately needed paradigm shift to the world of health IT. "The FLOSS model frees healthcare from the chronic deficiencies of legacy industry business models that have prevented the realization of the full potential of IT and many of the recent high profile failures," claims Dal Molin. Themes and real world examples to be discussed include the close alignment of FLOSS with evidence based medicine and clinical transformation, significantly increased affordability and sustainability, elimination of digital divides and barriers to innovation. Joseph Dal Molin is President of Canadian e-cology corporation and Director of WorldVistA, a not for
profit established to coordinate the development and dissemination
of the open source version of VistA, the US
Veterans Administration's integrated Electronic Health Record system. The "open source" theme will be expanded upon in a special track on " Benefits of Free/Libre Open Source Software in Health Care (FLOSS-HC)" at Med-e-Tel 2010 with presentations and discussions on April 15th and 16th. The FLOSS-HC track is supported by the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Open Source Working Group, European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) LIFOSS Working Group (Libre/Free and Open Source Software in Health Informatics), International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH), and the Open eHealth Foundation. |
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Austrian Institute of Technology and partners present mobile health terminal at Med-e-Tel 2010  To provide optimal treatment and care, data about the patient's vital status, daily activities, nutrition, etc. is essential. The AIT Mobile Health Terminal combines the advantages of electronic data capture with the capabilities of standard mobile phones and intuitive handling to provide a solution for care and health related services.
The AIT Mobile Health Terminal supports physicians and caregiver by intuitive recording of quantitative data about the user's health status, medication intake and activities, and through an assessment of the user's nutrition and well-being.
Data capture is carried out using AIT's novel Keep-In-Touch Technology (KIT) which is based on Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled devices. This allows for data to be captured intuitively and securely, even by users who are not not familiar with mobile phones.
A server based monitoring system analyzes the incoming data and generates appropriate feedback messages and reminders for the users or informs the responsible physician or caregiver about critical situations.
The AIT Mobile Health Terminal, supported by customary mobile phones and secure data transfer, complies with international data protection guidelines, and fulfills all requirements for its application within clinical trials.
Meet AIT representatives and their partners on the Med-e-Tel 2010 expo and see the Mobile Health Terminal and peripheral devices at work. Hear more about "Pervasive Healthcare via The Internet of Medical Things" from AIT's Günter Schreier in the Med-e-Tel 2010 opening session on Wednesday April 14th and from Jürgen Morak in a presentation on "Intuitive and Touch Based Interface for ECG Acquisition Using Mobile Phones" in the Telecardiology session, also on Wednesday April 14th.
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THOR presents respiratory pharmaceutical testing systems at Med-e-Tel 2010
The efficiency of a new respiratory drug can be checked most efficiently with the help of a respiratory diagnostic system such as a spirometer.
THOR Medical Systems presents the SpiroThor and SpiroTube Mobile Edition respiratory diagnostic systems at Med-e-Tel 2010. These devices have been optimized for drug testing in the field and can easily be used by the patients themselves.
A simple and user friendly mobile phone interface has been implemented to collect the data. Once collected, the software that is running on the mobile phone sends the medical record via MMS or SMS to a server. That server is a mobile phone receiving the MMS or SMS data continuously and saving it on a PC. The medical records can be GDT or HL7 format, selected by the customer.
The medical records are saved in the drug test database, that is located either at the clinical research organization (CRO) or at the pharmaceutical company. The THOR system is simple, easy to set up, easy to use, and is fully automated.
For more information, visit THOR Medical Systems at Med-e-Tel 2010. |
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Innovative EHR solution grants healthcare providers access to health information of 10 million patients  The Province of Gauteng in South Africa selected Tiani Spirit GmbH to provide Electronic Health Records (EHR) in accordance with the country's strategy to develop a National Health Information System. Phase One of the project's deployment is now complete. The solution will ultimately enable the secure exchange of health information for 10 million patients.
The interoperability infrastructure, based on the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE®) cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) architecture, supports healthcare providers from 29 hospitals and 348 clinics. Diagnostic images and medical reports are shared seamlessly and securely, enabling patient tracking regardless of physical location, and allowing access to the patient's complete longitudinal health record.
"This is the first fully deployed Electronic Health Record platform in South Africa that is entirely based on healthcare standards and integration profiles from IHE® for cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS)" said Martin Tiani, CEO of Tiani Spirit GmbH. "This is important because it makes possible the sharing of patient documents stored in information systems from multiple vendors and health authorities."
This innovative implementation in South Africa proves the feasibility of cross enterprise and cross country EHR solutions. Accessing the information from each exam and encounter of the patient can only be achieved through collaboration between all stakeholders: health authorities, hospitals, clinics, and vendors. Healthcare providers reap the benefits of the patient's lifetime health record, making better medical decisions and utilizing their resources more effectively.
Tiani Spirit and eHealth Business Services GmbH have formed a partnership, bringing together their complementary skills and expertise in healthcare integration, medical network infrastructure and clinical information systems to realize this project.
Meet eHealth Business Services and Tiani Spirit representatives in the Med-e-Tel 2010 expoto find out more about their EHR solutions and experiences.
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Leuven Medical Technology Centre: spearheading R&D in telemonitoring and electronic medical records
 The Leuven Medical Technology Centre (LMTC) is an intergroup collaborative centre within the University Hospitals and the KULeuven University Association. Its activities are focused on five multidisciplinary themes: medical imaging and image processing, robotics & automation in health care, controlled release, biomaterials & tissue regeneration, and biomonitoring & control.
LMTC will present its current telemedicine and ehealth research and developments at the Med-e-Tel 2010 expo, and also during a presentation by Dr. Siegfried Jaecques, LMTC Coordinator, in the Med-e-Tel conference program on April 16th (in the "Teleconsultations and Remote Treatment" sessions).
At the University Hospitals Leuven, Information Technology is not only used to optimize
operations within each department, but also to improve
interdepartmental cooperation, to optimize workflow over the complete
institution, and to provide continuity of care with external partners.
The emphasis is on integration within the overall infrastructure and
within the global electronic medical record (EMR). This hospital-wide
integrated information system facilitates applied research and
evaluation of new concepts, systems or technology, and ease transition
of promising developments to clinical routine. EMR cases that will be illustrated at Med-e-Tel include (1) telematics cooperation for early breast cancer detection where the main
challenge is to organize cooperation among a heterogeneous group of
radiological centers. (2) Supporting medical cooperation over the
internet in the LISA project, where the focus is not on exchanging a limited
set of standardized data but on active cooperation and planning around
the current episode of care. (3) Integrating software components into
global organization and workflow.
Another one of the LMTC projects to be presented is FallCam which focuses on building and validating a camera system for fall detection of elderly people that live at home. Image processing algorithms for person tracking and fall detection in the home environment have been implemented and are now being tested on simulated and real-life data of fall incidents.
In a project called Painvision, nonverbal expressions of patients with severe dementia are monitored by a vision system and discomfort is identified in real-time by pattern recognition techniques. A digital discomfort labeling tool (DDLT) has been validated on 80 datasets. When fully implemented, the system will constantly monitor the patient and alert a caregiver when the patient reaches a pre-set critical level of discomfort.
An applied biomedical research project ("TBM") focuses on detection of nocturnal epileptic convulsions in pediatric patients based on accelerometers. A detection algorithm for frontal lobe seizures was developed and it was observed that the clinical manifestations of a convulsion vary between patients. Therefore the detection algorithm is now further developed using patient-specific prior knowledge.
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Mali's ANTIM agency to participate at Med-e-Tel 2010
The National Agency of eHealth and Medical Informatics (Agence Nationale de Télésanté et d'Informatique Médical - ANTIM) of Mali ensures the promotion and development of telehealth and medical informatics. The main goal of the agency is to develop the intranet of the Ministry of Health and strengthen skills of staff through ongoing training, diagnostic capabilities, access to specialized health care, quality services in health facilities, use of research data and knowledge management between different actors of health information.
ANTIM representatives will attend Med-e-Tel 2010 with the aim of establishing partnerships in view of their mHealth development and implementation plans for the Malian health system.
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ICN and IHTSDO team up to ensure a common health terminology  The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) recently announced a collaborative agreement to advance terminology harmonization and foster interoperability in health information systems.
"ICN will embrace this collaboration as an important means of supporting nurses in providing quality care. Nurses need to be able to access and share patient information in a standard way,
to ensure safety, improve quality of care across the health care delivery system and communicate with other health professions. The ICN-IHTSDO collaboration will facilitate this," explained David Benton, ICN's Chief Executive Officer. "Many nurses from around the world have contributed to the development and improvement of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®). ICN can advance their efforts through this collaboration with IHTSDO."
The new agreement complements the aims of both organizations for state of the art health informatics standards. Close collaboration of standards organizations diminishes gaps and
overlaps in standardized terminologies. ICN will be an active participant in the work of the IHTSDO and will facilitate involvement of the nursing community through the IHTSDO Nursing Special Interest Group and ICNP® programme activities.
Optimal healthcare terminologies in health information systems support the goals of improved quality of care, enhanced patient
safety processes, and valid data- based decision support for clinicians and policy development.
"IHTSDO welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with international nursing organizations to ensure that clinical terminologies respond to the needs of nurses, who are the largest health profession," said Jennifer Zelmer, CEO of the IHTSDO. "We share the goal of having terminologies working effectively together in computer systems that support patient care and other applications."
ICN and IHTSDO are the developers of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) and SNOMED Clinical Terms (CT), respectively. The ICNP® terminology serves a
critical role for ICN in representing the domain of nursing practice worldwide, thus providing nurses at all levels with data-based information used for practice, administration, education and research. SNOMED CT is a multidisciplinary healthcare terminology designed to support the entry and retrieval of clinical concepts in electronic record systems and the safe, accurate, and effective exchange of health information.
At the Med-e-Tel 2010 opening session, ICN's David Benton will present some of the Council's current telenursing initiatives.
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Newsbriefs To follow are links to some interesting and recently published articles, studies, interviews and reports (if you would like to suggest an article for inclusion into a following newsletter, feel free to send details to info@medetel.eu):
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