He was among the pioneers of hospital digitization. Way back in 1988, Professor Walter Hruby, Chair of the Institute for Radiological Diagnostics at the Donauspital Vienna, in Austria, decided that, when his hospital opened its doors, state-of-the-art technology would be implemented. Thus, in 1992, the Donauspital became Europe’s first, fully-digitised hospital. Today, recollecting that…
Founded in 1981, IT solutions provider cobixx is a highly successful WLAN solutions innovator, an expertise now recognised by Cisco, a world leader in internet network solutions. Cisco’s Advanced Specialised Partner status is awarded solely to providers with a proven track record of competence in design, construction and maintenance of unified wireless LAN solutions. Denise Hennig reports
Given that European countries have very diverse healthcare systems with special types of hospitals and even special information systems, comparison of healthcare systems and hospital performances is difficult. Thus, the first HIMSS Europe Leadership IT Summit, which took place in Rome, has provided a platform from which to discuss quality patient care based on IT and particularly the…
The Global E-Health Forum, which will take place on October 25-26, 2010, in Hamburg, Germany, will address the main challenges healthcare systems all over the world are facing: demographic shifts, the impact of globalization and an increased burden of chronic diseases and expensive treatments.
The well established, universal health care structures of EU countries with most specialty practices located within hospitals has led to a more advanced electronic patient record environment. Globally, 2/3 of Health Care Professionals have already implemented Electronic Patient Record systems but the US lags with less than half.
A study* to assess the usability of hospital IT in Germany by focusing on effectiveness (functionality), efficiency (software ergonomics) and application support, has been published by the German association of manufacturers of healthcare IT solutions (Verband der Hersteller von IT-Lösungen im Gesundheitswesen – VHITG).
Renewing Health is the Veneto Region’s response to the third Call of Proposals by the European Information Communication Technology Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP). The project, which falls under the ICT-PSP financing plans, aims to facilitate the use of ICT-based solutions and services for citizens, the government, and businesses, as well as aiding their diffusion throughout Europe.
The teaching hospital in Olomouc aims to become a national centre for telemedicine. A telemedicine system is currently used by the hospital’s Internal Medicine Department 1 for cardiac patients and almost a hundred patients are remotely monitored via a telesystem implemented by the hospital.
The Health Informatics Congress held in the UK this April, revealed how IT is helping health Trusts across the UK to take innovative steps in the way they respond to patients’ needs. The Clinical Showcase session examined how Trusts are coping with new patient administration and reporting systems and, in particular, how Cerner Millennium and Lorenzo systems are being implemented.
In April, the Asklepios Future Hospital (AFH) Programme, a multinational cooperation of 25 business partners, gained a new partner, Prof. Rupert Gerzer, Director of the German Aerospace Centre, an expert in distance medical services. In a partnership begun over five years ago with Microsoft and Intel, Asklepios designed the AHF to develop special hospital and entire healthcare system information…
The hosting service has been selected, software standards have been published, and on 11 December 2010 any French citizen will be able to open a file and begin creating a secure, personal electronic health record (EHR). If the agency charged with this ambitious programme meets the deadline, France will suddenly jump to the leading edge of e-health worldwide, rivalling advanced national programmes…
The introduction of electronic patient records (EPRs) can ‘dramatically’ speed up the Chlamydia treatment cycle, more than doubling the number of people treated within two weeks of a test result, according to research led by Dr Gary Brook at the Patrick Clements Clinic, Central Middlesex Hospital, London, and published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
The World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition (WoHIT) -- the first joint eHealth conference of the European Commission and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS Europe) --- was held in Barcelona this March, creating Europe’s largest gathering of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) stakeholder groups as well as end-users, hospital CEOs, practitioners and…
In 2011 more than 30,000 hospital caregivers in 10 European countries will participate in an exchange of electronic patients’ records (EPRs) in the world's largest, first-ever cross-border connection of e-health systems. Brussels refers to this as a ‘large-scale e-health implementation’, and while it is easy to laugh about the bureaucratic language, it was the careful, go-slow approach of…
A telemedicine network project currently being implemented in the Leipzig region has won Australian IT firm iSOFT the top award in the 5th Ideenpark Gesundheitswirtschaft (Idea-park Healthcare) competition, presented by the Financial Times Deutschland at its annual FTD-Health Conference in Berlin. The awards are given for projects that contribute to greater transparency, productivity and…
Seven hospitals in the Tyrol region are now online with an IHE cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) network centred at Insnsburch University Hospital. About 4,000 patient discharge letters are exchanged daily and 4,000 queries managed.
After years of promise, with no progress, e-health is gaining ground in Europe, where governments see the potential for cost reductions and productivity gains in telemedicine, regarding it as a magic formula to fix overstretched healthcare systems, and the European Commission (EC) is aggressively pushing tele-anything in healthcare to drive what it sees as a potential for job creation and…
Like many others, Austria is in the process of introducing electronic patients’ records (EPRs) for use in and by all healthcare facilities. After a drawn out preparation phase, a company was founded to implement the project and ELGA (Elektronische Gesundheitsakte) is underway. ‘E-health will come, step by step, but inexorably’, said Austrian Health Minister Alois Stöger.
Although focused mainly on European challenges, the Health Executive Summit (19-21 May 2010, Paris, France) aims to share ‘visionary strategies and latest best practices’, as well as to provide solutions for current health challenges facing European health systems. As such, the event draws in leaders and decision-makers from around the world.
The eHospital Census is a comprehensive historical record of healthcare IT installations at the functional level. Regarding hospitals in 12 European countries and 44 software applications (like Radiology Informations System or PACS) the eHospital Census contains descriptions of the installed base including availability, scope, market share, age profile, and life span of installations. The…
The equation is simple: Hospital IT data is growing exponentially, hospital funds are not. Facing enormous data volumes and less chance of increasing equipment or staff, IT managers inevitably suffer headaches. ‘Cloud is really IT being delivered as a service over the Internet,’ Mark Clark explained.
In June 2009, IBM introduced the industry’s first set of commercial cloud services. Based on two years of research and hundreds of client engagements, the IBM Smart Business ‘cloud’ portfolio aims to help clients turn complex business processes into simple services. How does IBM explain what cloud services are? Cloud Computing is a form of IT use where the end user can utilise…
Agfa HealthCare announced that it has signed an agreement with Montpellier CHRU for the installation of its leading Hospital/Clinical Information System (HIS/CIS) ORBIS across its seven facilities. Montpellier CHRU is one of France's leading care facilities with seven institutions providing a full spectrum of healthcare. As an academic hospital, it provides critical care, teaching and…
The World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition (WoHIT) 2010 will for the first time be held in conjunction with the European Union’s annual High Level eHealth Conference and is being organised by the European Commission, HIMSS Europe, the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Policy, the Regional Government of Catalonia and Foundation TicSalut.
Entrepreneur Dr Gunter Pollanz was a central figure in the build-up of charter flights to Israel and in the foundation of MAOF Airlines in Tel Aviv. Later, he also developed important export structures from Israel to Europe. However, in 1997 his life took a dramatic turn when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Prognosis: Although 54 years old he faced just three more months of life. Today, Dr…