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News: Newsletter 21

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November 13, 2003

In this newsletter:

  • Med-e-Tel: the international trade event for ehealth, telemedicine and health IT
  • Call for abstracts for the Med-e-Tel educational and information program
  • New ISfT already actively working out its new strategies
  • The eHealth Alliance: a collaboration for the appropriate development, implementation and maintenance of ehealth technologies
  • City ehealth Research Centre (CeRC) and City Health Informatics Centre (CHIC) launched
  • Telecommunication helps improving access to health care services in developing countries
  • Telemedicine in Pakistan
  • Telemedicine assisted referrels for burn wounds
  • News from the Med-e-Tel media partners
  • Newsbriefs
  • Conferences


With attendees coming from more than 40 countries worldwide, with exhibitors coming from Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Ukraine, Canada, USA and pavilions announced from UK, South Africa, Russia and Korea, with a with a wide range of presentations and conferences taking place during the event, and supported by an impressive line-up of national and international organizations, Med-e-Tel is THE international trade gathering to discover products, services and innovative technologies, to gather updated information on clinical, technical and business topics, and to network with influential and important contacts from around the world.
If you are a manufacturer or supplier of ehealth and telemedicine equipment, or if you offer telecommunication services or information technology for use in ehealth and telemedicine applications, consider what the return could be of a participation at Med-e-Tel:
- meet with your existing customer base and show them your new developments;
- meet with new potential customers;
- find out about the needs in the market and develop new products or adapt your existing products to meet those needs;
- establish contacts with representatives of international institutions and organizations and find out about opportunities to work together with them in the implementation of national and international projects;
- organize a meeting with your sales agents or distributors to add direction and momentum to your sales program;
- make a presentation on a thought provoking subject and increase your exposure at the event and your status as an innovative force.
As a visitor, you will have the opportunity to:
- meet with a wide range of suppliers of ehealth/telemedicine equipment or ancillary services;
- meet with international institutions and organizations involved in ehealth/telemedicine research, development and implementation;
- ask questions you have pertaining to the implementation of ehealth/telemedicine applications in your organization;
- step away for a few days from your daily activities and to focus completely on new opportunities to become more efficient;
- find new products for distribution in your country or market;
- spot future trends;
- attend high profile presentations on clinical, technical, business and regulatory subjects presented by industry experts;
- make valuable contacts with other attendees and exchange thoughts and ideas.
To sign up as an exhibitor and to take advantage of free pre-show promotional opportunities, fill out and return your stand application form or if you have any questions, contact us at . If you would like to visit Med-e-Tel, submit your visitor registration form or contact us at . More information about the event can be found at www.medetel.lu and will also be reported in upcoming newsletters.


The Med-e-Tel exhibition and its educational and information program will feature an extensive program of presentations, panel discussions and satellite workshops and conferences on ehealth, telemedicine, and other ICT applications in medicine. The program will cover the result of recent projects and experiences, product presentations, training sessions by exhibitors, updates and workshops from several international organizations. The focus of the program will be on topics such as:
- bio-informatics and intelligent clothing
- blood pressure and other vital signs monitoring
- broadband and wireless networks
- cost-benefit studies
- current ehealth and telemedicine realizations and projects
- developing countries and ehealth/telemedicine
- distance education
- ehealth/telemedicine integration into routine medical practice
- electronic health cards and electronic medical records
- home monitoring and homecare applications
- legal and ethical aspects
- reimbursement issues
- satellites and ehealth/telemedicine
- secure data transmission
- standardization and interoperability
- telemedicine and psychological impact including e-therapy
- telemedicine and transport systems (air, rail, road, sea, space)
- telemedicine applications in cardiology, radiology, wound care and other medical disciplines
To submit a presentation, click here and send in a speaker application form and abstract before December 5th, 2003 to . If you want to receive an application form per e-mail or if you have any questions about the program, please also contact us at .


The recently relaunched ISfT (International Society for Telemedicine) is compiling lists of existing associations and is already actively establishing global links and communication with and among national and international organizations and institutions who are involved in the development, research and funding of telemedicine activities, in order to advance and promote the global cause of telemedicine and ehealth.
Through some of its national members (UK eHealth Association and Polish Telemedicine Society), ISfT is now also assisting the creation of a soon to be established Hungarian Telemedicine Association, whose first general meeting is planned for January 2004.
With the increased number of national telemedicine initiatives and associations worldwide, ISfT is set to become an association of associations, with active participation of the telemedicine industry as well as professionals and individuals who are involved in the implementation and use of telemedicine systems.
For more information about ISfT and about how to become a member, contact (President) or (Treasurer). A new ISfT website will be operational soon.


As reported in a previous newsletter, the eHealth Alliance has recently been formed in order to coordinate promotion of the appropriate development, implementation and maintenance of ehealth applications within the NHS and other UK health and social care organizations. The organizations currently involved include The British Computing Society (BCS); The Confederation of eHealth Websites (CeW); The International eHealth Association (IeHA); The e-Health Innovation Professionals Group of the Institute of Health Management (IHM), the Association of ICT Professionals in Health and Social Care (ASSIST) and the BCS Health Informatics Committee (BCS HIC); The Royal Society of Medicine eHealth and Telemedicine Forum; and the UK eHealth Association (UKeHA). The NHS Confederation is currently involved as an observer.
The eHealth Alliance has been established to enable all of the organizations with an interest in this area to coordinate their activities and to speak with one voice on important and emerging issues for ehealth. In particular, the eHealth Alliance expects to act as a single point of contact for those with an interest in obtaining information and accessing expertise within the area of ehealth.
In addition to regular meetings, the eHealth Alliance member organizations intend to make this possible through the use of a range of support facilities, including a list server, linked websites, coordinated meetings, conferences and symposia, and the production of an eHealth Alliance Newsletter.
The eHealth Alliance will be pleased to work with those with a responsibility for the development and implementation of ehealth applications across the health and social care sector, and is particularly interested in facilitating the promotion of appropriate implementation of such systems. To this end, the eHealth Alliance will welcome approaches from those with responsibility for development and implement of ehealth solutions within the NHS, Social Services and the Health and Social Care organizations.


The City ehealth Research Centre (CeRC), a member of City Health Informatics Centre (CHIC), was launched in September 2003. CeRC research interests include development, evaluation and usability of medical digital libraries and the application of agent technologies in health care. Key research projects include the development of the National electronic Library for Communicable Disease (NeLCD), a Specialist Library of the NeLH, and the Antimicrobial Resistance Digital Library. In addition, the expertise of the centre includes distribution aspects of digital libraries, quality of service, semantic web and health care ontologies. CeRC is also involved in building an online health community around communicable disease and in research into the impact of Internet-based health information delivery on user knowledge and attitudes and quantitative weblog analysis. The centre is involved in a number of national and international initiatives around ehealth, communicable diseases and public health and have organized several international workshops in this domain, such as the Healthcare Digital Libraries 2003 (HDL 2003).
The new City Health Informatics Centre (CHIC) at City University was built on a long tradition of research and teaching in the area of health informatics. In particular, well established cross-disciplinary networks involving the School of Informatics and the Institute of Health Sciences exist which undertake research across the broad sweep of activities included within "ehealth". City University health informatics research activities have wide national and international outreach, including long-established links to external organisations, NHS organisations, health professional bodies in the UK and abroad. Areas of activity include, research to support healthcare delivery and enhance health outcomes, supporting clinical decision making, telemedicine/care, modelling physiological, clinical and healthcare processes ranging from the individual patient to issues of health policy, the role of digital libraries in health care, agent technologies in healthcare, healthcare ontologies, usability and user evaluation studies in health information systems, human-computer interaction and acceptability, investigation into the patient knowledge and attitude change after using Internet health websites.


The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has a special Study Group dealing with the application of modern telecommunication and information technology in the healthcare sector in developing countries. This "telemedicine" or "ehealth" group consists of representatives from developing and developed countries.
The developing countries have an overwhelming need for the provision of medical and healthcare services, especially in areas outside the cities, where telecommunication services and installations could be an economical means for achieving national health policy objectives with regards to improvement and/or extension of medical and health care.
The ITU is actively promoting telemedicine services in developing countries by implementing telemedicine projects in several countries. As a result of these projects, the Study Group has produced a special report on "Telemedicine and Developing Countries - Lessons Learned". Two new reports are under preparation: "Recommendation on eHealth Policy and Strategy for Developing Countries" (in cooperation with the World Health Organization) and "Guidelines on How to Formulate an eHealth/Telemedicine Project and Determining Appropriate Telecommunication Facilities".
A recent meeting of the telemedicine Study Group in Geneva decided to support the participation of developing countries in international exhibitions dedicated to telemedicine and ehealth, so that international contacts with suppliers of telemedicine and ehealth products and services could be established. ITU is currently preparing its participation at the Med-e-Tel 2004 event in Luxembourg, which will include some ITU workshops or presentations. A decision was also taken by the Group to update the Telemedicine Directory of companies and organizations offering telemedicine and ehealth related products and services, and to distribute this directory among all developing countries.


The Preston Institute of Management, Science and Technology (PIMSAT) in Karachi, Pakistan, initially committed to improving the quality of technical and business education in Pakistan, is now in the process of adding telemedicine to its commitment. By setting up a computer-based telecommunication system at the Institute which links healthcare professionals in several rural and remote communities, the institute will not only improve quality of life in the business sector, but also in the health sector as well.
The Institute believes that accurate health information and diagnostic service in underserved and rural areas are critical in Pakistan. Since the Internet is already highly sophisticated in Pakistan, it was decided that setting up a Telemedicine Centre of Excellence at the Institute would be the best approach. The Centre, which is supported by the Pakistan Federal Minister of Higher Education, will serve various purposes among which will be the training of health workers and professionals about how they can use information technology to share their experiences on what methods have succeeded in preventive health. These trained practitioners can then redistribute the information on how to prevent epidemics such as AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis and how to improve sanitary conditions. Training of the health practitioners will be done through distance education building on models currently being used in Canada, United States and some European countries. The content of the training will be designed and provided by the local health institutions, in collaboration with Canadian, American and European health institutions.
A unique feature of this collaborative initiative, is that the collaborators will not have to be in the same place and physically present all the time. They will have the option of developing training courses on-line, using the existing technology infrastructure and communications systems at the Preston Institute.


Telemedicine systems have been evaluated around the world for follow-up and diagnosis of burn injuries at a distance. There is often considerable resistance to change, especially with technology, and in order to reassure healthcare practitioners and nursing personnel that a custom designed system ( Store-And-Forward Encrypted Telemedicine for Acute Plastic Surgery trauma and burns - SAFETAPS) is appropriate for evaluating the acute burn injury, a review has been conducted at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex, UK. Urgency of transfer, percentage burn and safety of the airway were evaluated. Only 2% of images provided no useful information. The information from the images allowed more informed decisions on the organization of the urgency of transfer, greater accuracy in the calculation of the burn injury percentage and the degree of concern over the airway. This was a small retrospective study and the findings reassured the clinical team to use the images in the everyday management of the acute burn injury referral. Thus allowing the earlier input of a specialist while the patient is remote to the burns centre. A large prospective trial is underway. Further information about the study can be found on the TIE (Telemedicine Information Exchange) and TIS (Telemedicine Information Service) websites.


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.


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 and we will include a link in a next newsletter):
- Crisis or no crisis - saving lives with TETRA (Nokia TETRA customer newsletter (pdf) - pages 8 & 14)
- Preliminary clinical evaluation of a video transmission system for home visits (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)
- The reliability of diagnosis using store-and-forward teledermatology (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)
- MobiHealth Body Area Networks new promise to meet mobile health care challenges (Virtual Medical Worlds)
- NHS Stories: Telemedicine (BBC News)
- Worldwide Web takes over image distribution (Diagnostic Imaging)
- The Value of Healthcare Information Exchange and Interoperability (Center for Information Technology Leadership (pdf))
- Home Care Technology and Telehealth - The Future Is HERE! (Home Healthcare Nurse)
- Underwear may be heart lifesaver (BBC News)
- Wireless Telehealth Application Sets Speed Record for Cardiac Treatment (ATSP)
- Telehealth Award Winners for 2003 Announced (ATSP)
- Pioneering Group Practices Explore New Technologies (Health Data Management)
- Multiple Benefits Driving Continued Need for Electronic Records (Health-IT World)
- Doctor redefines visits with phone, e-mail (American Medical News)
- European teleradiology center starts primary reads (Diagnostic Imaging)
- Technology that makes you healthy (CNN.com)
- Web-based Telemedicine (Advance for Health Information Executives - requires free subscription)
- UC Davis to Study Portable Satellite Telehealth System (ATSP)
- International society links national e-health interests (Diagnostic Imaging)
- Revolution in the Evolution of Health Care Communication (Advance for Nurse Practitioners)


- The 4th International Conference on Successes and Failures in Telehealth (SFT) will be held on 22-23 July 2004 at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Abstracts are invited for presentations reporting on either successful or failed experiences related to telehealth, including clinical, educational and administrative applications. For more information, go to www.uq.edu.au/sft or contact . The ISfT 9th International Conference on the Medical Aspects of Telemedicine will be held in conjunction with SFT 2004.

 
 

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