COCIR organised a session to share its vision on ‘eHealth from promises to sustainable aims’ during the inter-ministerial eHealth conference hosted by the Czech EU Presidency in Prague on 18-20 February 2009. Around 60 experts attended from industry, user groups, payers, governments, clinicians, academics and patient groups.

The session gave an informed view of the European healthcare IT market today.  Speakers highlighted the key aspects of healthcare IT: its promise of more efficient, better quality and safer health care delivery, but also the challenges faced by vendors - market fragmentation, lack of reliable market statistics to help shape a long-term strategy, need for infrastructure to allow the deployment of advanced clinical applications and interoperability.

Most participants agreed that interoperability is an important enabler of innovation and efficiency.  Eric Maurincomme, Chair of the COCIR Healthcare IT Committee, reiterated “the crucial need for Member States to work together on common interoperable solutions towards harmonisation. (1) Standardisation  remains an important tool to achieve this”.  He stressed industry's willingness to share its competence and welcomed the Commission’s role in promoting interoperability through the epSOS (2)   project.

eHealth’s cross-border role received considerable interest from the floor.  In today’s Europe, cross-border healthcare cannot become a reality without strong cooperation between the Member States and all relevant stakeholders.

Nicole Denjoy, COCIR Secretary General, told stakeholders “COCIR has been a long-term supporter of dialogue between users and vendors. COCIR urges all vendors to get on-board to build an industry-wide platform on eHealth. COCIR is actively involved in strategic discussions for example on telemedicine, which is expected to be a pillar of an efficient healthcare system”.

1 COCIR is involved in two strategic initiatives driven by the European Commission. The first, EXPRESS, is due to issue recommendations on European Standardisation Reform by end-2009 and the second is the ICT Standardisation Steering Committee
2 epSOS is a European-wide project gathering 12 Member States and 30 industry partners to develop a practical eHealth framework and Information & Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure that will enable secure access to patient health information focusing on patient summary and emergency data set.

Contact: Nicole Denjoy, COCIR Secretary General, +32 2 706 8960

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