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News: Newsletter 26

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April 16, 2004

In this newsletter:

  • Predicting major market changes in healthcare IT
  • Telemedicine in hypertension
  • WEALTHY: Wearable Health Care System
  • Med-e-Tel venue changes name
  • Program of the Med-e-Tel parallel and plenary sessions
  • Satellite events taking place in conjunction with Med-e-Tel
  • Expo showcases applications from around the world
  • Join us for the Med-e-Tel social events
  • News from the Med-e-Tel media partners
  • Newsbriefs


Experience in other service industry sectors indicates that effective deployment of IT support at the point of delivery is a key component for any strategic solution. However, the current structure of healthcare IT markets has given cause for concern about capabilities on several different fronts:
- Lack of large scale well financed suppliers of healthcare enterprise systems;
- Problems with growth and profitability for innovative small-scale suppliers of specialist clinical systems;
- Difficulties for major technology vendors in working though specialist healthcare solution IT suppliers as distribution channels;
- Challenge of identifying appropriate funding sources for shared IT infrastructure at regional or national level;
- Reluctance of healthcare users to deploy high level strategic and change management support resources;
- Failure to engage necessary resources for large-scale technical integration and project management.
For other comparable service industries, commodity networking and communication technologies, together with growth of Internet and associated technologies, have revolutionised service delivery and enabled transformational change. If similar pressures for change and productivity improvement in healthcare delivery are to be met, a step change in levels of IT investment and delivery capabilities of industry will be required during the next decade.
Current emphasis on discrete IT solutions at the point of care address a perceived need for more (and 'better') clinical systems. But this has led to replication and support of existing processes, rather than utilising the full strategic capability of IT to enable transformational change. It has proved consistently difficult to cost justify IT investment at current sub-optimal levels and there is clear evidence that substantially higher investment is required in order to generate significant returns in terms of higher productivity and better value for money.
These and other topics will form the basis of a plenary session during Med-e-Tel entitled "Tracking eHealth Evolution in Europe", presented in cooperation with HINE (Health Information Network Europe). See for more information.


Despite increasing financial and human resources invested, the disappointing rate of hypertension control continues to pose a challenge to health care providers in the civilised world. Hypertension control means the percenage of the patients who achieve target blood pressure values. Unfortunately the current hypertension control rate is only 6-27% in Europe. Self blood pressure (BP) monitoring is known to improve hypertension control. However, the way it is currently practiced, it does have several limitations. Blood pressure data recorded and reported by the patients are unreliable, log-book entries evaluation, data structuring and computer storing requires more time and are a considerable burden on the physician.
TeleBPmonitoring is a new innovative method, which provides up to date, detailed information from the patients' home to the physicians and has been proposed by the European Society of Hypertension in the Guidelines of the Management of Arterial Hypertension, issued last year. There is convincing evidence to indicate that telemedical BP monitoring systems are efficient in improving hypertension control, improve drug utilisation, and decrease the need for office visits.
The 'Telemedicine in Hypertension' plenary session at the last European Society of Hypertension (ESH) Congress in Milan in 2003 enjoyed a great success. The ESH will present a follow-up session in Luxembourg in conjunction with the Med-e-Tel event, providing the latest results of large randomised controlled studies, like the Milan TeleBPCare project. The support of the ESH for this session represents a new era in the cooperation with Med-e-Tel, International Society for Telemedicine (ISfT) and clinicians. The session at Med-e-Tel will take place on Thursday April 22, 2004. More details are available at www.medetel.lu/education/plenary/2004/Telemedicine_in_Hypertension.html.


WEALTHY is a project developing a textile health-monitoring system which people can wear everywhere. This new intelligent monitoring system is intended to function on wireless principles and can be used at home, in a hospital, at work or during other physically demanding activities. The concept aims to provide continuous remote monitoring of user vital signs and is both socially- (the rising cost of assistance, the need to improve early-illness detection and medical intervention) and technologically-driven.
Sensing interfaces designed to be minimally invasive, based on flexible technologies conformable to the human body, are also cost-effective in providing assistance, for example in rehabilitation from cardiac disease or in the prevention of acute crisis, and for the monitoring of professional workers engaged in extreme environmental conditions. By providing direct feedback to the users, they can act on a higher level of awareness and allow better control of their own condition.
The system uses functionalised yarns to manufacture woven or knitted garments possessing distributed functional regions. Strain fabric sensors based on piezoresistive yarns, and fabric electrodes realized with metal based yarns, enable the realization of wearable and wireless instrumented garments capable of recording physiological signals, to be worn instead of a classical garment without any discomfort for the user. Respiration, electrocardiogram, electromiogram, activity sensors, temperature can be listed as physiological variables to be monitored through the proposed system.
Information about the project and the technological developments will be provided during a session at Med-e-Tel on Thursday April 22, 2004. More details are at www.medetel.lu/satellite/conference/2004/wealthy.html.


The Med-e-Tel venue has recently announced a name change from 'Foires Internationales de Luxembourg (FIL)' to 'LuxExpo Luxembourg'. So when attending Med-e-Tel next week, make sure to look for the right place! It's still in the same location, but with a different name. For more details and driving directions, go to www.medetel.lu/h_t/venue.html.


With some last additions, the program of the Med-e-Tel parallel sessions has now been finalized. The program includes sessions covering the following general topics:
- eHealth: Economic Benefits
- eHealth Efficiency
- Telemental Health: Therapy and Rehabilitation
- Telemedicine for Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases
- Electronic Databases
- Telepathology and Transfer of Images
- Internet as a Valuable Tool in eHealth
- Recent EC and National Projects
For program details and timing, go to www.medetel.lu/education/parallel_sessions.html.
The plenary sessions feature the following topics:
- Tracking eHealth Evolution in Europe
presented in cooperation with HINE
- Telemedicine in Hypertension
presented in cooperation with European Society of Hypertension (ESH)
sponsored by TensioMed
- PACS and EMR - Industry Landscapes and the Shape of Future Technologies
presented in cooperation with Frost & Sullivan, IMCO Technologies and Tech Aid Development
For program details and schedule, go to www.medetel.lu/education/plenary_sessions.html.


Med-e-Tel will feature several satellite events hosted by a range of pro-active Telemedicine and eHealth organizations and project consortia:
- Du Dossier Patient Electronique au Portail Santé: Quelles Sont les Conditions de Réussite?
hosted by CRP-Santé (Centre de Recherche Public - Santé)
sponsored by Cegeka Health Care Systems, Cerner, IBM, McKesson, Medasys, MIMS, Omega Pharma, Symphonie On Line
- eHealth Standardization: A Need
hosted by International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Health Organization (WHO) and European Space Agency (ESA)
- Telemedicine for Developing Countries
hosted by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and World Health Organization (WHO)
- Medical Mobile Devices
hosted by MEMO
- Wearable Health Care System
hosted by WEALTHY
Also meetings by the eHealth Standardization Coordination Group (eHSCG) and International Society for Telemedicine (ISfT) are scheduled.
More information can be obtained from www.medetel.lu/satellite/satelliteall.html.


The Med-e-Tel exhibition will showcase medical ICT applications which lead to higher quality of care, cost reductions, workflow efficiency, and widespread availability of healthcare services. These services and applications include: vital signs monitoring systems and devices, electronic patient records (EPR), picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), videoconferencing, secure data exchange, surgical systems and software, mobile devices, speech recognition and processing, telemedicine applications in pathology, cardiology, dermatology, wound care, radiology, and more. For a list of exhibitors, go to www.medetel.lu/exhibitor/list.html


We cordially invite you to the Med-e-Tel Welcome Reception, scheduled on Wednesday April 21st at 6pm in the beautiful Cercle Municipal at the Places d'Armes in the very heart of Luxembourg city. It will be a great 'get together' in a relaxed and informal environment after a hard day's work, an opportunity to meet with old friends and get introduced to new colleagues. Without any doubt, it will be a great networking opportunity.
On the second evening of Med-e-Tel (Thursday April 22nd) you are again invited to the Exhibitor and Attendee Reception (taking place at the LuxExpo venue) which will follow the end of that day's exhibition and conference activities.
Also don't forget the Med-e-Tel Opening Ceremony, taking place on Wednesday April 21st at 10am.


For information on publications, journals, magazines, reports 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 information that will be provided by the Med-e-Tel Media Partners in the Media Corner during the Med-e-Tel event, or go to for more details.


To follow are links to some interesting and recently published articles and studies (if you would like to suggest an article for inclusion into a following newsletter, feel free to send details to ):
- State-of-the-art PACS requires frequent upgrades (Diagnostic Imaging)
- Here lies teleradiology: rest in peace (Diagnostic Imaging)
- Smooth Operators; Technologists have keyed into the PACS enterprise (Advance for Health Information Executives)
- A pilot study of nurse-led, home-based telecardiology for patients with chronic heart failure (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)
- Survey Profiles Wireless Monitoring (Mobile Health Data)
- Mobile health care could become as compelling as text messaging, states Wireless Healthcare report (Virtual Medical Worlds)
- German researchers aim to set patients free with wireless telemedicine applications (Virtual Medical Worlds)
- Eutist-M develops new medical information technologies in areas including radiology and surgery (Virtual Medical Worlds)
- Los Angeles Telemedicine Program Fills Urban Health Care Need (ATSP)
- Telemedicine Advances Could Expand Psychiatric Care (ATSP)
- Dutch hospital embarks on long-term digital archive project (Diagnostic Imaging)
- NAHIT Launches Directory to 'Accelerate' IT Implementation (Health-IT World)
- Who Owns the Medical Record? (Health-IT World)
- Medical house calls (The News Review)
- Lessons from the central Hampshire electronic health record pilot project: issues of data protection and consent (British Medical Journal)
- A cost-effectiveness analysis of interactive paediatric telecardiology (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)
- Success factors in the long-term sustainability of a telediabetes programme (Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare)

 

 
 

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