Horizons and Perspectives eHealth

EHealth platform represents the combined use of IT technologies and electronic communications in the health field, using data (electronically transmitted, stored and accessed) with a clinical, educational and administrative purpose, both locally and distantly. eHealth has the significant capability to increase the movement in the direction of services centered towards citizens, improving the quality of the medical act, integrating the application of Medical Informatics (Medical IT), Telemedicine, Health Telematics, Telehealth, Biomedical engineering and Bioinformatics. Supporting the creation, development and recognition of a specific eHealth zone, the European Union policies develop through its programs FP6 and FP7, European-scale projects in the medical information technologies (the electronic health cards, online medical care, medical web portals, trans-European nets for medical information, biotechnology, generic instruments and medical technologies for health, ICT mobile systems for remote monitoring). The medical applications like electronic health cards ePrescription, eServices, medical eLearning, eSupervision, eAdministration are integral part of what is the new medical branch-eHealth, being in a continuous expansion due to the support from the global political, financial and medical organizations; the degree of implementation of the eHealth platform varying according to the development level of the communication infrastructure, allocated funds, intensive political priorities and governmental organizations opened to the new IT challenges.eHealth, telemedicine, telehealth, bioinformatics, telematics

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated

Integration of Patient Health Portals into the German Healthcare Telematics Infrastructure

In this paper we describe a generic model of a patient health portal, which is suitable to implement patient access to the evolving German healthcare telematics infrastructure. The portal uses the telematics as a communication infrastructure to ensure the concise and secure exchange of medical data between professional medical personnel and patients. We aim at providing patients an application platform model for using and enhancing their data by processing or extending them with medical services offered via the internet or with local medical appliances. We show that a) specific functionalities (such as data import/export from/to the telematics) for patient health portals can be derived from the legal foundation in the German law b) the portal is conceptually suited to provide a link between the public health information infrastructure and other (maybe commercial) applications in the e-health environment via Personal Health Records (PHR) and c) patients’ rights can be mapped with a common data model

MOSAIC roadmap for mobile collaborative work related to health and wellbeing.

The objective of the MOSAIC project is to accelerate innovation in Mobile Worker Support Environments. For that purpose MOSAIC develops visions and illustrative scenarios for future collaborative workspaces involving mobile and location-aware working. Analysis of the scenarios is input to the process of road mapping with the purpose of developing strategies for R&D leading to deployment of innovative mobile work technologies and applications across different domains. One of the application domains where MOSAIC is active is health and wellbeing. This paper builds on another paper submitted to this same conference, which presents and discusses health care and wellbeing specific scenarios. The aim is to present an early form of a roadmap for validation

The Failed Implementation of the Electronic Prescription in Germany - A Case Study

Many countries worldwide are striving for improving the quality of care and for reducing costs in the health care sector by establishing large IT infrastructures. In Germany, the introduction of the electronic health card and the national telematics infrastructure is lagging years behind the original schedule. In this paper, we describe and analyze a case study of one selected part of this ultra-large intervention. The selected part is the failed implementation of the electronic prescription. The related activities started in 2003 and ended in 2010 when a decision was made to abandon this part of the intervention. We present a detailed analysis of the project and identify 14 reasons in five categories for the project’s failure. Furthermore, we provide a multi-layered overview of the episodes and sub-projects

MOSAIC vision and scenarios for mobile collaborative work related to health and wellbeing

The main objective of the MOSAIC project is to accelerate innovation in Mobile Worker Support Environments by shaping future research and innovation activities in Europe. The modus operandi of MOSAIC is to develop visions and illustrative scenarios for future collaborative workspaces involving mobile and location-aware working. Analysis of the scenarios is input to the process of road mapping with the purpose of developing strategies for R&D leading to deployment of innovative mobile work technologies and applications across different domains. This paper relates to one specific domain, that of Health and Wellbeing. The focus is therefore is on mobile working environments which enable mobile collaborative working related to the domain of healthcare and wellbeing services for citizens. This paper reports the work of MOSAIC T2.2 on the vision and scenarios for mobile collaborative work related to this domain. This work was also an input to the activity of developing the MOSAIC roadmap for future research and development targeted at realization of the future Health and Wellbeing vision. The MOSAIC validation process for the Health and Wellbeing scenarios is described and one scenario – the Major Incident Scenario - is presented in detail

A Comparative Analysis of the Australian and German eHealth System

The Australian and German healthcare system share extensive similarities in their financial and administrative structures. Both countries follow a two-tiered system offering both public and private insurance. As Germany adapted the Australian DRG system in 2003 to bill patients according to diagnosis-related case rates, patient treatment and accounting also follow similar practices. Despite their common preconditions in the “offline” setting, the goals and execution of their nationally initiated eHealth solutions show vast differences. While Australia’s platform-based My Health Record offers an opt-in solution for patients and doctors to exchange healthcare data under shared control between patient and service provider, Germany’s Electronic Health Card (EHC) mandatorily includes personal and insurance data that can be further expanded with medical data and electronic health records. Information on the EHC is mainly managed by healthcare providers. The differing approaches are linked to different opportunities and weaknesses. This paper provides a systematic overview of the Australian and German eHealth system and gives suggestions on strategies and challenges from both countries. By conducting a SWOT analysis, both eHealth systems are critically reflected considering supported processes, applied technologies, and user acceptance. We furthermore discuss the impact of the individual systems on current healthcare issues and the success rate of their initial intentions

Information & communication technologies - panacea for traffic congestion?

As road pricing, telematics and logistics evolve, information and communication technologies (ICT) aim directly at making traffic flow more efficiently in a given infrastructure. Furthermore, the virtual world gives rise to new business fields and decentralised structures which affect the development of transport indirectly. While technological progress continues to drive qualitative improvements in traffic conditions, e-business and telework in particular have, for structural reasons, a much less pronounced effect on traffic than widely presumed. ICT helps in organising traffic flows more efficiently and plays a supplementary role as transport-relevant instrument, but it is not a panacea for traffic congestion.traffic, autobahn, ICT, LBS, mobile telephony