Sponsor/Exhibitor Visitor Educational
Program 		Hotel
Travel 		Press
Center 		Partners Proceedings Knowledge
Resources
News: Newsletter 19

back

 

August 25, 2003

In this newsletter:

  • eHealth Alliance proposed in the UK
  • Medoctor Systems presents automated medical diagnostic system
  • African telehealth symposium during Med-e-Tel 2004 in Luxembourg
  • Major African telehealth conference planned for Yaounde, Cameroon, June 12-16, 2004
  • Join the Tromsų Telemedicine Conference
  • News from the Med-e-Tel media partners
  • Newsbriefs
  • Conferences


The July-August issue of ehealthcheck (www.ukeha.org.uk/julyaugustnewsletter/index.html), the bi-monthly newsletter of the UK eHealth Association (UKeHA), reports that an alliance between the main representative bodies in the telemedicine and ehealth sector in the UK has been proposed. The group, which will be known as The eHealth Alliance, will include both full members, membership organisations which are specifically active in telemedicine and ehealth, and associate/observer members, consisting of relevant organisations which do not have a specific focus on telemedicine and ehealth. Full members of the proposed eHealth Alliance include Royal Society of Medicine, UKeHA, Institute of Health Management, Assist (Association for ICT Professionals in Health and Social Care), British Computer Society and International eHealth Association.
The planned activities of The eHealth Alliance are to include a joint bulletin, which will cover educational and current events, as well as providing information from the proposed eHealth Alliance members; targeted educational events, and promoting ehealth in general; a major annual ehealth conference, to provide members with an opportunity to pool their resources; and a coalition of websites (CEW).
In other news, ehealthcheck also reports about the establishment of a Home Healthcare Special Interest Group within the UKeHA, to identify healthcare challenges facing the NHS and to promote the benefits of home healthcare solutions for health & social care. The priority is to keep people in their own homes when ill, frail, vulnerable or disabled rather than in nursing, assisted homes or hospital.
The specialist group, which includes representatives from the NHS, Tunstall, Docobo, SmartSensor and Home Telehealth Ltd, will approach health ministers and organisations such as the Department of Trade and Industry and the Modernisation Agency with the aim of raising awareness of this relatively new industry, and to attract funding for the development of home healthcare.
More on these and other news items can be found on the ehealthcheck newsletter.


Medoctor Systems, Inc. of Napa, California, USA recently presented Version 2.0 of their patient-initiated automated medical diagnostic system to telemedicine experts at the WHO and ITU in Geneva.
The Medoctor system is designed to allow individuals to enroll, establish a medical history, perform a differential diagnosis (DDX) through an interview, and then create an electronic medical record (EMR), prior to the doctor visit. A printout of the DDX, including both positive and negative questions, can be handed to the primary care physician. Interviews average more than 50 questions, including onset and location.
Version 2.0 contains 830 diseases, including many of the major diseases prevalent in the developing countries and is operational in English, French, Spanish and German.
PCPs will benefit from increased diagnostic accuracy, reduced paperwork and easier monitoring by using the online EMR. Healthcare organizations will see cost saving due to early detection of diseases, most importantly, HIV infection.
The epidemiological value of the Medoctor database can not be overstated. Policy makers and economists will be able to mine data more efficiently and apply limited resources more effectively.
Medoctor will be working with the Africa Telehealth Group and EMG Africa, to deploy the system in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the first four countries where EMGA has acquired national distributorships. Negotiations for national distributorships in the Philippines, India and Japan are underway.
The Medoctor website and a demo of the system can be consulted at www.medoctor.com. For any enquiries, contact Medoctor at and visit them at Med-e-Tel 2004 in Luxembourg!


Africa Telehealth Group (www.africatelehealth.org), in close collaboration with its principal partners, Med-e-Tel (www.medetel.lu), EMG Africa (www.emgafrica.com), and Medoctor, Inc., will be holding a satellite symposium concurrently with the Med-e-Tel 2004 International Trade Fair. The theme of the satellite symposium, as captured in its title, is: "The African Diaspora, Telehealth and Telemedicine: A Symposium for Joint Action". While focusing on Africans in the Diaspora, the symposium would, nonetheless, seek to pool the energies of both continental Africans and those Africans born or living outside the African continent who have knowledge, expertise, or a passion to contribute to the effective development of e-health in Africa.
Organizations and businesses from or outside Africa seeking to exhibit their products or services during the symposium/trade fair are invited to formally express their interest.
For visa purposes, individuals and organizations from Africa wishing to participate are invited to contact the Africa Telehealth Group for an "Accreditation Certificate". This certificate would only be issued to those whose bonafide credentials can be established. Please contact Raymond Micah of the Africa Telehealth Group if you wish to attend, exhibit, or make a presentation at the symposium. He can be reached at .
The general topic areas for presentations are:
- Partnerships for Success: Establishing Diaspora-Continental African Relationships / Building African-Non African Collaborations;
- Making It Happen: Identifying and Resolving Organizational Issues;
- Creating A Facilitating Environment: Policies, Priorities & Institutions;
- Seeing The Business Possibilities: E-Health Technologies And Their Capabilities.


As part of its initiatives to facilitate telehealth transformation across Africa, Africa Telehealth Group is working in partnership with Med-e-Tel and a number of African counterparts to hold an African conference to jointly chart the way forward. The title of the conference is: "All Africa Telemedicine and Telehealth Conference: Envisioning Health Care and Technology Together". It is planned for June 12-16, 2004, and will take place in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde.
The planned meeting would take a decidedly continental focus, as it will seek to identify collaborative and integrative measures that could be taken across the continent to promote and strengthen e-health. Particular attention would be paid to facilitating the sharing, standardization, and interoperability of e-health technologies and practices across the continent. Other key objectives of the conference include the enumeration of existing health networks on the continent, the identification of measures to achieve a comprehensive, integrated continental telehealth system, and the definition of appropriate policy and program frameworks to support successful e-health transformation.
In preparation for this conference, Africa Telehealth Group and its partner, Med-e-Tel, would like to invite expressions of interest from prospective participants who wish to contribute by way of a formal presentation, exhibition, chairing of discussion panels, or the general sharing of perspectives. Interested individuals and organizations are encouraged to contact Raymond Micah of the Africa Telehealth Group at as soon as possible.
The general topic areas for the Yaounde conference are:
- International Public Health Surveillance Approaches: Lessons for Africa;
- Latest e-Health Technologies and Best Practices: Possibilities for African Adaptations;
- Telehealth Strategies: Achieving Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Goals;
- Telehealth and Patient Information Protection Protocols: Current Practices and New Ideas for Africa;
- From Silos to Partnerships: Enumerating African Health Networks and Integrating Actions;
- Aiming for Compatibility: Standardization and Interoperability of Technologies and Systems;
- Making Health Investments Count: Budgeting, Policies and Priorities for e-Health;


The Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) is organising the first Tromsų Telemedicine Conference (TTC2003) on September 15-17, 2003. This is the first of what is going to be an annual international telemedicine and e-health event. This year, the conference is arranged in cooperation with the International Society for Telemedicine (ISfT), celebrating both the tenth anniversary of the ISfT conferences and NST's tenth anniversary.
TTC2003 has "Global Telemedicine - potentials and dilemmas" as its main focus. The Programme is now ready, and during the three day conference, some 80 presentations will be given, in addition to poster presentations and exhibitions. Several workshops are also held in connection with the conference.
TTC2003 is also happy to announce a cooperation with Med-e-Tel for the exhibition part of the conference.
Join the Tromsų Telemedicine Conference. This will be the place to be for interesting scientific presentations and for updates on recent developments in the area and for networking. And it is a perfect opportunity to visit Norway and Tromsų! For more and updated information, and for registration, visit www.telemed.no/ttc2003.


- For information on publications, journals, magazines and on-line information services that will help you to stay abreast of what is going on in the field of ehealth and to make better informed decisions in your daily business or healthcare practice, check out the list of Media Partners on www.medetel.lu.
- The staff of the Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE) is currently collecting information about active telemedicine programs and projects for the 2003 Report on Telemedicine Activity. If you are affiliated with a telemedicine program and would like to have your program included in the 2003 Report, please fill out our online survey form. The deadline for survey submission is October 1, 2003. We will offer a discount to survey respondents on the 2003 Report. For other survey formats, please visit our Telemedicine Program Survey Menu.
- Information for Tomorrow, an independent healthcare research company specializing in home telehealthcare tools and chronic disease applications, recently added a new feature to its website. Dubbed "Hot Topics In Home Telehealth," this feature will focus on issues like payment, new applications and new products, and will be updated bimonthly. The July/August update is online now.


To follow are links to some interesting and recently published articles and studies (if you know of any articles of notice, feel free to send details to [email protected] and we'll include a link in a next newsletter):
- Keeping Patients at Home (Health Data Management)
- Vendors See a Wireless Revolution (Health Data Management)
- Technology as a catalyst to transforming nursing care (Nursing Outlook)
- Self reported compliance of patients receiving antihypertensive treatment: use of a telemonitoring home care system (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)
- Russia and China to Create Satellite Telemedicine Network (ATSP)
- Kuala Lumpur Hospital Celebrates Success of Telemedicine Program (ATSP)
- Paperless Medicine - Saving Money, Saving Lives (CIO Magazine)
- Mobile Medicine - Wireless: Just What the Doctor Ordered (CIO Magazine)
- PACS hits the road with mobile surgery units (Diagnostic Imaging)
- Doctors Who Are Using E-mail With Their Patients: A Qualitative Exploration (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
- Do I get Free Roaming with that EKG?: Cell Phone Service Carriers Are Getting Into the RPM Business (Frost & Sullivan)
- Echocardiography PACS Goes Forward, Step by Step (Frost & Sullivan)
- Wireless LANs: Are They Worth the Security Risk? (Advance for Health Information Executives)
- Device Helps Patients Live Longer; Payers Save Money (Advance for Health Information Executives)
- Telecommunications technology makes its mark on healthcare delivery (Managed Healthcare Executive)
- Healing hearts by remote control (BBC News)


- The Association of Telehealth Service Providers (ATSP) invites you to their seventh annual conference: Telehealth 2003. The ATSP conferences focus on the business aspects of telemedicine and this year's theme is: "We Want Our ROI and We Want It Now: Re-Examining the Role of Telecommunications in Healthcare". Telehealth 2003 will concentrate on telehealth applications for which return on investment can readily be quantified. In the process, areas that have not received much attention in "conventional" telehealth thinking will also be explored.
For the second year in a row, the annual ATSP conference will be held in a teleconference format that can be accessed from any room with a phone line.
During the conference, winners of the third annual Telehealth Awards will also be announced. The Telehealth Awards were created by the ATSP to recognize and honor those organizations that are actively working to promote excellence in the telehealth industry.
Telehealth 2003 will be held September 16th-18th, 2003. More information including the full program, speaker biographies, and award nomination forms can be found at www.telehealthconference.org.
Telehealth 2003 is supported by the National Library of Medicine, TATRC (Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center), Telemedicine Research Center, HRSA Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, Canadian Society of Telehealth, National Rural Heatlh Association, and Med-e-Tel.
- The Biofeedback Foundation of Europe (BFE) is holding its 8th annual meeting in Winterthur, Switzerland on February 24-28, 2004. There will be choices of 1-day and 2-day workshops instructed by well-known clinicians from Europe and North America. These clinicians will demonstrate the latest biofeedback and neurofeedback techniques and technology for many applications. A scientific program on the third day, February 26th, will feature lectures, symposia, paper sessions, and poster presentations. There will be an exhibition area for commercial and non-profit organizations. For more information, contact: Vickie Gaves at or see www.bfe.org.

 
 

back