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IT Committee, COCIR, Brussels, Belgium
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Kees Smedema, COCIR |
Implementation of eHealth solutions in Europe will bring considerable benefits to patients as well as the health-care IT industry if introduced
in a co-ordinated way. eHealth increases the efficiency of processes and decision-making and improves patient care. Avoiding misdiagnosis and reducing medical error by having immediate access to patient information directly benefits patient and clinicians alike. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) plays a major role, because this allows the retrieval of patient information wherever and whenever it is needed in the care cycle.
Currently, there is no standard in Europe for EHRs or for interoperability between EHRs. Without interoperability there cannot be one health-care IT market in Europe. For industry, this means additional cost because there could be 25 or more different variations throughout the European Union (EU) all requiring customised solutions. This would not only be harmful to the global competitiveness of the European health-care IT industry, but it would also be more costly for patients and payers (insurance companies and governments). If there is one standard in Europe, then there can truly be one integrated European market that would provide the economy of scale necessary for the European health-care IT industry.
Policymaker support required
Health-care IT is one of the activities of COCIR, the European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT Industry. At a recent COCIR seminar to address “Challenges and Opportunities for eHealth in Europe,” COCIR called on European policymakers to support industry in developing an integrated approach to eHealth and to promote interoperability between health-care IT systems.
The international interoperability programme known as Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is a success story in user-vendor co-operation for interoperability; it works with existing standards where possible to find solutions in a fast and efficient way. COCIR believes that the EU should use IHE as a model for a Europe-wide approach towards interoperability.
If there is one health-care IT market in Europe, industry, including small- and medium-sized companies, will benefit. For patients, the impact on cost and quality of health care will be significant.
Kees Smedema is Chairman of COCIR’s IT Committee and Senior Director Business Development for the Business Group Healthcare Informatics, Philips Medical Systems, Veenpluis 4-6, Best, The Netherlands, tel. +31 40 276 3014, e-mail: kees.smedema@philips.com, www.cocir.org.
