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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.
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Organizer
Med-e-Tel is organized by the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH).
ISfTeH is the international federation of national telemedicine/eHealth associations, research institutions, care provider organizations, companies and individuals.
The ISfTeH network currently comprises members in 70 countries around the world. Its mission is to facilitate the sharing of information and experiences, to support networking among members, to expose potential synergies between member organizations and their activities, and enhance collaboration and partnerships, contributing to a more widespread and useful deployment of telemedicine and eHealth.
ISfTeH is recognized as an NGO in Official Relations with WHO (World Health Organization).
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Featured Partner
 The ICT for Health Unit is part of the Directorate that focuses on ICT addressing societal challenges at the European Commission, Directorate-General for Information Society and Media.
Its mission is to contribute to better health and well-being of all European citizens, to bring economic and productivity benefits to the health systems of all EU Member States, and to stimulate the sustainability and growth of the eHealth industry in Europe.
Get an update from Peteris Zilgalvis, Head of the ICT for Health Unit, about the European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe and the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing during the Med-e-Tel 2012 Opening Session and how these strategies and initiatives relate to eHealth and telemedicine.
The European Commission is also once again an active contributor to the 2nd Global eHealth Strategies symposium that will be held at Med-e-Tel 2012 on April 18th.
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.
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CME - Continuing Medical Education
Med-e-Tel is accredited by the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME) to provide the following CME activity for medical specialists. The EACCME is an institution of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) - www.uems.net.
Med-e-Tel is designated for a maximum of 17 hours of European external CME credits. Each medical specialist should claim only those hours of credit that he/she actually spent in the educational activity.
EACCME credits are recognized by the American Medical Association towards the Physician's Recognition Award (PRA). To convert EACCME credit to AMA PRA category 1 credit, contact the AMA. |
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Preliminary list of Med-e-Tel 2012
exhibitors/sponsors:
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Featured Media
Partners
AT Today is a new online magazine keeping you up to date in the world of Assistive Technology. It is published by the BHTA (British Healthcare Trades Association) and THIIS (The Homecare Industry Information Service).
The quarterly CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation magazine (C&R) covers clinically-focused and practice-driven articles, congress reports, news and other relevant topics appealing to a wider readership including industry professionals, policy makers, clinicians and individual citizens. 
European Hospital is a leading, pan-European professional healthcare magazine for medical directors, nursing directors, and hospital managing directors. We keep you up-to-date on trends and innovations in the healthcare market, on clinical research, and on the newest developments in medical technology.
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.
Infomedix International is a B2B magazine for the medical industry. It is mailed to 15,000 medical manufacturers, distributors, dealers, importers, exporters, wholesalers and agents worldwide, and distributed at medical tradeshows around the world. Infomedix International is connecting medical businesses worldwide!
The Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare provides coverage of developments in telemedicine and e-health and is recognised as the leading journal in its field. 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 and more.
Medical Education Online (MEO) is a peer-reviewed international Open Access journal for disseminating information on the education and training of physicians and other health care professionals. It was launched in 1996 as the first ever freely available online journal in the field of medical education and has since then grown to become a highly ranked source of information in this area, with indexing in PubMed/MEDLINE.
Established in 1999, ArabMedicare.com is a regional web portal aimed at healthcare professionals from government, business, and academia with over 1.8 million visitors per year from over 120 countries.
Providing Market Intelligence Services (Arab healthcare market), Accredited Online Continuing Medical Education Courses, Medical News Syndication Services, Consultancy on the Arab Healthcare market. 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.
Information and journal/magazine copies from these media partners will be made available to participants at Med-e-Tel 2012. |
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Return on investment of eHealth investments
Med-e-Tel features every year a regional seminar and training session aimed primarily at the Luxembourg, Belgian and French marketplace. The 2012 edition of this training session focuses on "return on investment of eHealth and Health IT investments" and will address questions such as "How to calculate the real ROI of eHealth/Health IT investments?", "Which benefits can be obtained?", "Which solutions work and which don't?", "What can I learn from experiences gained by my colleagues over the past 10 years?". The training is provided by François Daue of Solstisse - Center of Expertise for Healthcare - and also includes contributions from global management consulting company Accenture on:
- Connected Health - Lessons from International Experiences
- Strategic Cost Management: Rapid Cost Take Out Actions, Cost Governance Model Evolution, and Business Model Review
and relevant experiences from hospital administrators in Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland:
- Benoît Debande, CIO at University Hospitals of Geneva (Switzerland)
- Joseph Bellon, President of SIXI (Nursing and Informatics Association) and Nursing Director at Clinique Notre-Dame de Grâce de Gosselies (Belgium)
- Christian Oberlé, General Director at Clinique Dr. E. Bohler and Administrative Director at Fondation François-Elisabeth (Luxembourg)
- Thierry Klein, Coordinator of Medical Information at Erasmus Hospital (Belgium)
The session is targeted at hospitals, care homes, mutualities and health insurers, public authorities and industry representatives from Luxembourg, Belgium and France. The session is kindly supported by: For more information, click here. And to register for this event, click here (a regular registration for Med-e-Tel also includes access to this event). The session takes place on April 19th (all day) and presentations and discussions in this session will be held in French. Presentations by Accenture will be made in English. |
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Global eHealth Ambassador, Lord Nigel Crisp, to address Med-e-Tel audience
This year, in addition to the enticing content to which participants have become accustomed, Med-e-Tel will also feature, for the first time, one of the Ambassadors of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth's Global eHealth Ambassadors Program (GeHAP): Lord Nigel Crisp, former Chief Executive of the NHS in the UK, will give a keynote address on day two of the event (April 19th).
The GeHAP, which is chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was successfully launched in Rio de Janeiro last year and aims to raise the profile of eHealth worldwide through advocacy activities. Advocacy plays a particularly important role within the broad framework of using ICT to strengthen health systems.
The eHealth Ambassadors are globally recognized personalities who serve as high-level advocates for eHealth. They articulate consistent, ethical and evidence-based policy and advocacy positions with regard to the use of ICT in health; promote the development of integrated eHealth systems in countries; and advocate a higher profile for eHealth in health development activities, country budgets, bi-, and multi-lateral partnerships, and aid and development programs.
The GeHAP has been established with seed funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gulbenkian Foundation.
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Telemedicine as a tool in Japan disaster relief: the disaster cardiovascular prevention network (D-CAP)
The experience from a 1995 Japanese earthquake showed that 14% of fatalities were not caused by the initial event, but by cardiovascular events triggered by the stress and the resulting environmental conditions. The Disaster Cardiovascular Prevention Network (D-CAP) was established by Dr. Kazuomi Kario, Chairman of Cardiovascular Medicine at Jichi Medical University using several fellow members of the Continua Health Alliance. Interoperability was guaranteed between the Continua members. This allowed the team to be up and running within seven days, installing a comprehensive patient monitoring system capable of identifying high risk patients in a background of no fixed infrastructure.
Hear more from Frank Downing of A&D Medical, on behalf of the Continua Health Alliance, in the Med-e-Tel 2012 Opening Session about the healthcare response to last year's earthquake and tsunami in Japan by way of telemedicine and facilitated by interoperable devices.
Continua is an open industry organization of healthcare and technology companies joining together in collaboration to improve the quality of personal healthcare. Continua is dedicated to establishing a system of interoperable personal connected health solutions with the knowledge that extending those solutions into the home fosters independence, empowers individuals and provides the opportunity for truly personalized health and wellness management.
Meet Continua members Accenture, Andago, GlobalMed, Intel, Medgate, Nonin, Orange in the Med-e-Tel expo.
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Enabling safer and equitable health services through eHealth interoperability and standardization
Implementation of eHealth has a number of challenges some of which are technical, while others are organizational. Lack of standardization of eHealth solutions has resulted in systems and applications that are not interoperable (interoperability refers to two or more parts of a system exchanging information, then using it, according to IEEE).
The cost (human lives and financial) of lack of interoperability is very high. The benefits of interoperability include better access to information, it is the foundation of health information systems and support to other systems, clinical data exchange in electronic health records and reduced repetitive data entry, reduced time to develop systems, reduced time in training, reduced time in validation, reduced repeated prescriptions.
The increased use of mobile technology connected to both medical devices and health and medical databases requires a new generation of standards that will ensure safe, secure and timely data exchange between these systems.
Hear more about the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) in development and support of eHealth standardization (including terminology, indicators and data exchange) from Dr. Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, Director of Knowledge Management and Sharing (KMS) at WHO during the Med-e-Tel 2012 Opening Session.
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HealthStartup Europe presents startup initiative Sense Observation Systems at Med-e-Tel
HealthStartup Europe aims to create a more hospitable environment for health startups by creating connections between the burgeoning digital startups scene and the health sectors. At Med-e-Tel 2012, HealthStartup Europe will put a startup initiative in the spotlight and discuss and evaluate its potential with entrepreneurs, health care professionals, policy makers and investors.
The startup initiative that will be discussed is Sense Observation Systems from The Netherlands. Sense is a technology company providing context aware communication and transaction support. Sense provides integral solutions that optimally make use of the availability of sensors to create local and networked context awareness. Sensing that an older person has fallen in the bathroom, and setting up communication with the nearest available person to give a hand is just one of the many possible applications.
After a brief introduction of HealthStartup Europe and Sense Obervations Systems, the HealthStartup session at Med-e-Tel (April 19th) will continue with a panel discussion providing valuable interaction and useful insights into the Sense Observation Systems business case, and will help to guide investors and entrepreneurs in their future investment and development decisions in the digital health sector. Panel members will include Ton Brand (GSMA), Malcolm Fisk (Ageing Society Grand Challenge Initiative (Coventry University) and Telecare Services Association), André Petitet (ISfTeH and CATEL), Ofer Atzmon (Aerotel Medical Systems).
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Aerotel's GeoSkeeper wins North American approvals
Aerotel Medical Systems has received the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Certification as well as Industry Canada (IC) certification for its innovative location-based personal alert system, GeoSkeeper.
The approvals pave the way for Aerotel to start offering the GeoSkeeper system in the lucrative North American markets of the USA and Canada. GeoSkeeper is already being sold in other markets around the world, including Israel, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America.
"GeoSkeeper offers a real solution to the needs of the North American medical alert and personal safety sectors," said David Rubin, Aerotel Medical Systems President & CEO. "Adding GeoSkeeper to Aerotel's family of products sold in this market will enable Aerotel to further expand its presence in the North American market for the benefit of both patients and healthcare providers."
Aerotel has started negotiations with several security and medical alert service providers in North America in order to start offering the GeoSkeeper to the growing market of medical alert and personal security in the near future. The GeoSkeeper personal safety and location system is specifically designed to provide peace of mind for elderly, chronically ill, children or lone workers, as well as their relatives and caregivers.
Aerotel has been active in the USA and Canada for more than a decade offering a wide variety of telemedicine solutions, including its personal handheld electrocardiogram (ECG) systems, homecare data hubs, and telemedicine remote monitoring software solutions. Aerotel's telemedicine solutions are in use by various remote monitoring service providers, taking care of chronically ill patients belonging to various health care organizations.
Meet Aerotel at the Med-e-Tel 2012 expo and hear about their longstanding experiences in the telemedicine and telehealth market during the Med-e-Tel 2012 Opening Session.
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Catastrophic disaster response and telemedicine
An interesting blog post by Roger Downey on the GlobalMed blog: A new report is out that identifies what we should be doing to prepare for a major natural or manmade disaster. "Crisis Standards of Care: A Systems Framework for Catastrophic Disaster Response" is its title, and the pre-publication copy is available on the Internet. I thought it would be worthwhile seeing what this very lengthy report said about telemedicine. Thankfully, there is a "search" function, and so I searched for "telemedicine."
In this nearly 600 page report, there are only four references to telemedicine in a sort of passing way. Even though one of the 10 "Disaster Planning and Response Considerations from a Rural Perspective" is "Explore the use of technologies such as telemedicine," that's pretty much the depth of that exploration. No Chapter Title, no Section Heading, no Sub-Section Heading, just a mention.
In the summary, the authors say the reasons for this report were the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the earthquake in New Zealand. What these three catastrophies have in common is widespread injury and damage. Much of Joplin was destroyed in minutes. Emergency care for the injured in Joplin took hours, if not days, to be available. 160 people lost their lives in that F5 tornado. Japan's loss was thousands of lives due to the tsunami and the relocation of tens of thousands of people. Not to minimize the New Zealand earthquake, but although powerful, it killed 65 people.
What worries me even more is a real flu pandemic. We had a run-up for it in 2009, but it was never as serious as forecast. So, it troubles me that the authors of the report don't see the value in telemedicine for the survivors of these natural disasters and for the protection of healthcare providers during a pandemic. Every community should have the ability to provide healthcare to the injured via telemedicine. The technology is there - you don't have to "explore" it. Even if cell towers are knocked down, or in Joplin's case, the hospital is destroyed, satellite technology can bring specialists to the patients.
One of the academic studies cited in the report is "Armenia 1988 earthquake and telemedicine: Lessons learned and forgotten." I think it might easily be applicable today.
Meet GlobalMed representatives at the Med-e-Tel 2012 expo and hear from GlobalMed's Detelina Trendafilova about "Moving from Pilot to Implementation: The Road to Cost-Effective, Accessible Healthcare" in the Med-e-Tel 2012 conference program.
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Med-e-Tel advance registration: submit by April 13th
Register now for Med-e-Tel 2012 and obtain a full event registration for €465, including access to the expo area, all conference sessions during 3 days, evening receptions, conference materials, and networking opportunities with Telemedicine and eHealth stakeholders from some 50 countries around the world.
Avoid queuing when arriving at the event and submit your registration online in advance (before Friday this week, April 13th).
Registration conditions can be found here. For more information, see www.medetel.eu or contact info@medetel.eu.
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Hotel and travel arrangements for Med-e-Tel 2012
Room blocks negotiated by the Luxembourg Convention Bureau have been depleted. However, they can still assist you with hotel reservations for your stay in Luxembourg during Med-e-Tel 2012. Contact the Luxembourg Convention Bureau at convention.bureau@lcto.lu.
Air France/KLM are offering discounted airfare to Luxembourg for Med-e-Tel participants. See here for conditions and information and to book a ticket online.
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Newsbriefs
To follow are links to some interesting and recently published articles, books, 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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