BARCELONA, SPAIN – (HealthTech Wire / News) – Closer collaboration between the US and Europe may help to accelerate the wide-scale implementation of eHealth applications. Joint efforts in the fields of certification, interoperability or eHealth research could make life easier for care providers, scientists and companies.
Charles Friedman, Deputy National Coordinator at the Office of the National Coordinator for health information technology in the US, presented an update on the massive efforts of the Obama administration in terms of the increased adoption of eHealth solutions in the US healthcare system.
“At the heart of the project is what we refer to as meaningful use of electronic health records,” Friedman said. The concept of meaningful use implies that medical institutions that adopt electronic health records and use them in a “meaningful” way are eligible for financial incentives from the Medicare/Medicaid budgets. “Over the lifetime of the project, we are talking about USD 17 billion,” said Friedman.
In addition to the “meaningful use” system, standards will be defined and a framework for privacy and security will be established. Concerning closer cooperation between the US and the EU, Friedman said that healthcare systems on both sides of the Atlantic were facing the same challenges. “This is a profound basis for collaboration.” According to Friedman, two particularly interesting topics which merit collaboration are electronic prescriptions and clinical patient summaries. These rank highly on the US agenda. At the same time, they are being driven forward by the EU Commission as part of the epSOS project on cross-border interoperability.
Ilias Iakovidis, Acting Head of the unit “ICT for Health” in the European Commission’s DG INFSO, put forward even more suggestions for joint transatlantic eHealth efforts. An agreement on technical standards, he said, would be extremely helpful, not only for European and American companies but also from a global perspective. “If the EU and the US can agree on eHealth standards, everyone else will follow,” Iakovidis said.
###
This is a HealthTech Wire original text. You are free to use it, in full or in part, for journalistic purposes if the source is acknowledged: Source: HealthTech Wire (www.healthtechwire.com).
© 2010, so2say communications
