Focus on ...

The eMessenger – All The News Direct To Your Desktop

Brussels-based HIMSS EMEA is delighted to welcome readers to our new monthly eNewsletter. This will be delivered regularly to healthcare IT professionals across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Produced by our secretariat, the eMessenger will focus on one topical aspect of healthcare IT each month and include a specially commissioned interview with an expert in that field.

This inaugural issue highlights Personal Health Systems and features an interview with David Whitlinger, president of the Continua Health Alliance. Continua represents almost 100 companies in the health, fitness, consumer electronic and technology sectors that work on personal telehealth systems.

Each edition of the eMessenger will also include a ‘Perspectives’ section and a question and answer corner. The former will offer opinions and news from the HIMSS EMEA secretariat while the latter will give readers an opportunity to submit their specific healthcare IT-related queries.

Keeping professionals right up-to-date is another area in which the eMessenger will provide must-have content by flagging up important new documents available. This information will run alongside the dates of major industry-relevant conferences and events.

And, in a new development, our expanded website will soon also host regular cutting-edge interviews with experts explaining their perspective on our ‘topic of the month’.

HIMSS will roll out important information, education and networking programmes in the coming months, and the eMessenger will update readers with news of these exciting projects.

Meanwhile, we want to promote dialogue and exchange across a wide range of issues. Any and all feedback will be warmly welcomed.

We hope you find the eMessenger lively as well as informative and, if you are not already a member of HIMSS, please note that all the information you need about our extensive membership package can be found at the end of the newsletter.

Thank you,

Michael Strübin
Executive Director HIMSS EMEA

Personal Health Systems

David Whitlinger is president of the Continua Health Alliance, a not-for-profit industry group encompassing almost 100 companies from sectors including health, consumer electronics, fitness and technology. The alliance also includes several healthcare providers.

Continua president David Whitlinger defines personal telehealth as “devices and services that empower people to help manage their own health in a good way”. Sounds simple? Far from it…

Says Whitlinger: “We’ve arranged personal telehealth into several categories: the first includes health and wellness, fitness device companies, computer platform companies and service companies.

“The next category is remote patient monitoring - helping chronic disease patients to manage their disease better, providing vital-signs monitoring many times daily and giving that data back to the hospital. “

“A third category covers elderly monitoring, tying in closely to chronic disease management. Providing services in the home so that family members can take better care of the patients in order to ward off a transition to a nursing home.”

Whitlinger likes to talk about the ‘personal health ecosystem’. “By ‘ecosystem’ we mean the whole marketplace,” he says. “The alliance is all about removing the barriers to allow a free market for devices and services - for classical medical or fitness devices, but also for consumer electronics. Basically, all the things we use in the home to provide telemedicine or telehealth systems.

Challenges to growth

One key ‘barrier’ is high cost due to low volume: “We’re working to create awareness of how these systems can be more cost-effective by involving the consumer electronics industry, which creates economies of scale. The costs issue can be addressed by growing the market rapidly through the tools of the consumer electronics industry.“

A further ‘barrier’ is reimbursement for personal telehealth, which tends to depend on which part of the world you live in. Some countries feel they have had too little data thus far to prove conclusively that PHS is effective. Continua is addressing this “by bringing together known data on effectiveness as well as being involved in large-scale trials”.

Visions for the future

Interoperability is less of a worry and Whitlinger notes that, in the next ten years, PHS will become integrated with IT. We’ll soon be using our PCs, mobile phones and other devices to manage our health and to collect medical data, such as levels of blood pressure.

He says: “You’ll be able to buy these devices with a Continua logo, certifying them as interoperable in order to interchange data not only with your physician but also with your gym, fitness consultant or weight loss manager. eHealth applications will therefore be an essential part of the internet and IT industry.”

But there is the matter of electronic health records (EHR). Whitlinger explains that the penetration of EHR globally is less than 20 percent – a big issue with regards to patient management.

For personal health systems to manage health better, he says, EHR must become commonplace. If this fails to happen “we will not see as much usage of PHS as we would like”.

More information

More information about Continua is available from their website.

David Whitlinger is president and chair of the board of directors of the Continua Health Alliance, as well as director of healthcare device standards and interoperability for the Intel Corporation.
Mr Whitlinger has been with Intel since 1993 and, prior to establishing the healthcare device standards group, worked on a wide variety of wireless standards. As a result, he and his team are leaders in many standards organisations throughout the world.
Mr Whitlinger is the author of five research journal articles, four of which focused on breast cancer DNA analysis.

Why HIMSS EMEA

HIMSS in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is dedicated to bringing together all the major stakeholders in the Health IT community to transcend borders and languages and engender a truly regional dialogue.

As members of HIMSS EMEA, individual professionals (managers, administrators, clinicians, technology experts and users), vendor companies and IT providers meet, interact and learn from one another.

With the opening of its EMEA office in Brussels, HIMSS is now positioned to provide activities, programmes and education specifically designed for the EMEA Healthcare IT community.

Guided by a Governing Council of members from within the region, HIMSS EMEA focuses on the needs of individual and corporate members to ensure dedicated services and membership value.

The new office of HIMSS EMEA - which officially opened in Brussels on 1 September 2006, with Michael Strübin as executive director - acts as a lively and thriving hub to better connect health IT professionals throughout the region.

"The aim," says Strübin, "is to advance the field and the delivery of healthcare together.

"Education and networking are at the core of the services being developed specifically by us, as we develop our vital role in the EMEA region, " he added.

Stephen Lieber, HIMSS CEO/President, said of the Brussels opening: "HIMSS is pleased to announce its expansion into this region to move forward the adoption of interoperable EHRs across the globe.

"Our members and all of us at HIMSS welcome the opportunity to work with the Brussels staff as the Society expands its educational and membership outreach in EMEA."

HIMSS worked extremely successfully with a number of partners and other organisations for the 2006 World of Health IT (WHIT) Conference & Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland and is currently preparing The World of Health IT 2007 , to be held in Vienna, Austria (22-25 October).

I am researching information on the EU healthcare directive. Can you provide me with a website providing information about the EU directive? I am particularly interested in blood tracking and patient identification. David W Frazier, Director, IT Galway Clinic, Doughiska, Galway CO. Galway, Ireland

Dear Mr. Frazier,

We are delighted to hear from you and thank you for your question. In “EU speak” a directive is a legislative act which requires member states to achieve a particular result but leaves the ways and means to do so up to the EU member states (in contrast to a regulation).

While a general “EU healthcare directive” currently does not exist, the European Commission has just finished its consultation process on a proposed Community action on health services. This Community action will primarily focus on establishing a clear framework (legal certainty) for cross-border healthcare and on supporting cooperation between the different health systems of the member states. For more information on this consultation take a look at the Commission Press Release.

Additionally, the European Union is currently involved in a variety of public health activities, ranging from avian influenza actions, a proposed EU-wide ban on smoking in public places, a directive on organ donation to a communication on alcohol use – to name but a few. Two EC related websites provide a good overview of these actions, namely the DG Health website and the Public Health Portal of European Union.

Concerning your specific questions (blood tracking and patient information) we have found two websites that may be of interest to you. The Public Health Portal has a dedicated sub site on blood issues, including information on the blood directive.
Concerning patient information Euractiv, an independent EU information service, provides a concise summary of ongoing activities and links to documents published by the stakeholders concerned.

We hope this information is useful and please let me know if you have any further questions or comments.

Daniel Spichtinger
HIMSS EMEA secretariat

Questions anyone?
Challenge us to help you with your (healthcare IT related) questions. Send your input to emessenger@himss.org (subject line: question time) and we will research and publish your questions and our answers in forthcoming issues of the eMessenger.

The HIMSS Mission

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the premier professional member organisation exclusively focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology.

The HIMSS mission is to lead change in the healthcare information and management systems field through knowledge sharing, advocacy, collaboration, innovation and community affiliations. HIMSS EMEA brings this mission to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Become a member

Membership benefits include

• A monthly e-newsletter – the HIMSS EMEA eMessenger – delivered to your inbox on the third Thursday of every month.
• A series of educational webinars on topics relevant for the Healthcare IT community in the EMEA region, to be launched at the end of March .
• An interactive website targeted at the main issues and experts within our community. This includes a weekly “Expert View” on the issues that matter to you as well as industry news (RSS feed in partnership with Healthcare IT News Europe).
• Access to the latest industry and policy documents on the HIMSS EMEA online resource centre.
• Significant member discounts on the World of Health IT Conference and Exhibition, the HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition, the HIMSS bookstore and HIMSS events.

To learn more about HIMSS EMEA take a look at our website: www.himss.org/emea