The European Commission Information Society & Media Directorate General releases report from TeleHealth2007 conference

Published: 03/18

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - (HealthTech Wire) – The European Commission Information Society & Media Directorate General announced today the release of a report from the TeleHealth2007 conference, held in Brussels, Belgium, on December 11, 2007. The idea behind the conference was that the European Commission wanted to hear the viewpoints of various experts in the field about the obstacles to the development of telemedicine and about the different solutions to overcoming them. The conference provided an overview of and introduction to the European Commission’s proposals for facing the challenge of delivering quality healthcare to all its citizens at an affordable cost through telemedicine services. The report can be downloaded here. (PDF)

“The increasing demand of citizens for the highest quality healthcare, the costs of managing chronic diseases and the need for prolonged medical care for an ageing society are major factors behind the need for innovative, cross-border telemedicine solutions in Europe. They enable the transfer of medical information via telephone, the Internet or other networks in order to efficiently support the consultation of patients and even remote medical treatments or examinations,” explained Gérard Comyn, Head of Unit, ICT for Health.

The overall objective of the TeleHealth2007 report is to support wider deployment of telemedicine services, with a particular focus on cross-border settings. Member States are encouraged to take advantage of the potential benefits of telemedicine, according to their specific needs. A second aim of the report is to encourage the Member States to deal with, as a common dilemma, important challenges in cross-border care that are associated with the practice of telemedicine. The report proposes specific actions that meet the overall objective.

“Whereas it is understood that the organisation of healthcare is solely an issue for each Member State itself, telemedicine services have the potential to be used in cross-border settings. Indeed, as the TeleHealth2007 conference showed, they are already being used in many cross-border contexts. The European Commission has a specific mandate to address those cross-border care issues which cannot be dealt with on a national basis alone,” said Frans de Bruïne, Director, ICT, highlighting the societal challenges involved.

The next step: telemedicine and innovative solutions for chronic disease management

In a set of next steps, the European Commission will develop a Communication focusing on “Telemedicine and innovative solutions for chronic disease management”. The EC will facilitate an assessment of the prospective rationale of such a Communication, its main focus, its key messages, the extent to which it is an ‘information-related’ style of Communication or an ‘action-oriented’ Communication and, if the latter, a coverage of its potential action points. These could, for example, be in areas such as infrastructure, interoperability, procurement of innovative services, legal issues particularly relating to liability, market issues particularly relating to certification and labelling and, last but not least, assessment, evaluation, and educational challenges.

The immediate steps in the proposed calendar include:

• May 2008: Dedicated sessions to be held at the proposed eHealth 2008 high-level conference on eHealth to be staged in Slovenia from May 6-7, 2008, and which will focus on discussions with policy-makers. Attendance by invitation only.
• October 2008: The actual policy document (“Communication”) on the provisionally-entitled “telemedicine and innovative solutions for chronic disease management” to be published under the umbrella of the French Presidency of the European Union.
• Winter 2008-2009: The policy document to be discussed at a later stage in the various Councils.

The European Commission welcomes any comments and contributions to help build the future Communication “telemedicine and innovative solutions for chronic disease management" to be sent to eHealth@ec.europa.eu.