Healthcare experts gather at eHEALTH 2008 at City University in London, UK
October 10, 2008Today's advancement of eHealth products and applications and their wider level of implementation along several countries across the globe has made the policy makers and other stakeholders to assess carefully future developments, taking into account the need to build seamless information exchange networks across regions and countries. eHealth developments are improving the right of access to quality healthcare regardless of their personal condition and geographical location, allowing the selection of the appropriate health resource from anywhere at any time. Far from restricting growth, the drive in standardization in individual countries is stimulating take-up and new products.
Rigid standards also encourage new companies to supply equipment and software to the market, as not only do they not have to design specific systems for each country but also government funds may, in some case, be available for development. This is particularly true for North American healthcare IT companies, which have previous experience complying with regulations in their home continent. The different tracks and sessions of the Conference focused the dissemination of results of research and technological innovation and provided the exchange of eHealth experiences between the various countries and regions, facilitating the definition of health and technology strategies and policies.
The eHealth 2008 Conference was organized as a meeting point for telecare product vendors, policy makers, government ministers, academics, clinicians and all those involved in electronic & mobile health, to examine and to share ideas contributing to the advancement of telecare into the 21st century. This event was chaired by Sir Jonathan Michael, Deputy Director, BT Health and several key figures from the industries and universities presented their research findings. Health industry senior figures including Kevin Dean, Director Healthcare Cisco Systems and Dr Justin Whatling, Director of Strategy & Planning, Global Healthcare BT Health presented their long term ehealth visions. Dr Mike Short, R&D Vice President O2 gave the audience a flavour of how mobile operators across Europe are striving to give better mobile healthcare facilities to the EU citizens. On the academic side senior academics like Professor Carl May and Professor Francis Mair explained to the audience the current state of the electronic health records in the UK and the social implications of the electronic healthcare implementations.
The conference received a lot of positive feedback and the participants have requested to continue the eHealth as an annual conference. The next series of this conference will take place in September 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey. More information can be found at www.electronic-health.org
Dr. Muttukrishnan Rajarajan
General Chair
First International ICST Conference on Electronic Healthcare in the 21st Century (eHEALTH 2008)