(HealthTech Wire / Interview) – In his role as Executive Vice President for Global Services at HIMSS, Jeremy Bonfini has a helicopter view on eHealth and health IT, not just across Europe but throughout the rest of the world. He unveils to HealthTech Wire the current trends in health IT, opportunities for European companies overseas and explains HIMSS' role in supporting this – not only in its information management capacity, but as co-organiser of the 'eHealth event of the year', eHealth Week 2011 (Budapest, Hungary, 10-12 May 2011).
Health IT has traditionally been something that helps improve hospital management, saving costs and improving efficiency. Are we seeing a move towards solutions that will also impact the quality of medical care?
Yes. And I would take it a step further. Hospitals are moving beyond the technologies that impact care within their facilities towards a more networked virtual health IT enterprise. The focus on the hospital is waning - not because it doesn't need to be maintained, but because it is being maintained. The next stage is to push information out into the 'eco-system': finding ways to move data from solely within the hospital out into the community, and from the GP's office, or even the home, to the electronic medical record (EMR). That's really the next frontier.
So how is HIMSS changing its focus to reflect this?
We're broadening our focus now to reflect the movement to healthcare outside the hospital. In many ways, HIMSS has been pioneering this approach since the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative of the late 1990s and is in some cases leading it now. There are of course other organisations – Continua, the European Mobile Health Alliance – that are focused outside the hospital. And with initiatives like eHealth Week 2011, HIMSS is trying to be the bridge that brings these two communities together.
You've chosen 'Investing in the Health Systems of the Future' as the theme of eHealth Week 2011. Why is this?
Current methods of delivering healthcare are simply not sustainable in the face of demographic changes and the likelihood that chronic diseases will double, or even triple, over the next 20 years. We have to take a long, hard look at what we're doing and what needs to change - and make sure that we have robust, intelligent systems in place to deal with this. And we need to find ways, together, of investing in such systems, Europe-wide, so that we are resilient in the face of such changes. eHealth Week gives us this opportunity.
Of course, Europe's challenges – which are common to all countries on the continent – hold the opportunity for European firms to develop world-leading solutions that will really carry us into the future.
Some European countries are not so “challenged” by their healthcare costs… for them it might be staff shortages rather than economic shortages that are the problem. Are you also addressing this at eHealth Week?
Yes we are. And, though on the surface these are two different problems, at the root the issue is the same – whether due to lack of money or a lack of specialist personnel, you have fewer people!
So the question remains the same: how can we get more efficient, more effective? And the answer is in the use of information technology.
What other topics can we expect at eHealth Week 2011?
eHealth Week really is 'the World Cup of eHealth and healthcare IT'. All the main players in Europe will be there – many of them hosting satellite events and programmes around the main conference. There will be top speakers and solution providers from countries throughout Eastern and Western Europe. And there will be representation from some countries outside the European Union – the Turkish Ministry of Health, for example.
This is the one week a year where the eHealth community of Europe gathers. You can do more networking, more professional development and conduct more professional business here than you can in any other week of the year.
The EC, which is co-organising the event, wants to see eHealth at the point where it appeals to patients. What has HIMSS done to advance this aim?
We've given hospitals the tools and information they need to help them populate personal health records. Though HIMSS doesn't have a 'direct touch' relationship to patients, we do provide a lot of services to our members that impact greatly on the patient.
HIMSS has recently extended its influence to Asia and the Middle East. Where do you see the business opportunities for European companies in these markets?
The primary objective in the Middle East and Asia is to serve the health IT professionals in those regions, but there will always be a benefit to the greater whole for HIMSS members in terms of access to opportunities and professional development that comes from specific regions.
As for opportunities, there are some very exciting things going on in the Middle East – and specifically in Saudi Arabia. They have just launched a national programme to integrate 300 hospitals into the national infrastructure in five years. Many of these hospitals are 'green field' sites! This project is one of the largest health IT projects to be completed in such a short timeframe and will require enormous resources.
In some of these countries, up to 50 percent of the adult population have diabetes - another example of an incredibly challenging public health situation that's helping drive investment in IT infrastructure.
What role does HIMSS Analytics Europe play in supporting HIMSS strategy?
HIMSS Analytics Europe is a natural continuation of the mission of HIMSS. It serves health IT professionals by giving them the tools they need to benchmark their performance, their organisation's performance and the organisation's adoption of IT. There are many CIOs, IT directors and hospital CEOs around the world that say to us, 'great, we think we are here - but how do we compare with our competitors?' 'What percentage of revenue are we spending on IT infrastructure – and is this the right percentage?' and 'How do we take the step to become a paperless hospital?' HIMSS Analytics Europe is taking all these questions and putting them together in order to give hospital managers the tools they need to evaluate themselves.
eHealth Week will be in Denmark in 2012. What do you think will be the determining factors for the eHealth industry in Europe in the year beyond Budapest?
I think that a lot of the countries with mature implementations, like Denmark for example, are going to be looking to go to the next level . There's a great deal of interest in moving towards next generation solutions. The trends of continuing to integrate primary care and integrating GPs into the health IT infrastructure are going to be continuing themes. The key now is to start taking the total IT infrastructure and pushing it out to the home. Given the resource constraints - whether financial or personnel – we're going to see a lot more on ambient assisted living, remote monitoring and chronic disease management at eHealth Week 2012.
Mr Bonfini, thank you for your time and answers. (HTW)
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