FORUM IV REPORT. GASTEIN FORUM OCTOBER 8-IX-99.

INFORMATION TECNOLOGY: HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT.

Participants: representatives of Researches, Industry, Decision Makers, Financial authorities, EU.

11 topics were selected as global outputs of the 2 mid days working parties.

1.- Technologies.

It is clear now: basically technologies exist in a user friendly ways, BUT implementation plans are requested at the ad hoc level: local. Regional, national or EU level with clear definition of the objectives, expected results, benchmarks etc.

2.- Standardisation.

The implementation plans must guarantee continually and standardisation is mandatory.

As a minimum, clear publicly available technical specifications .

For other purposes, national or international regulations, specially in the domain of respect of infoethics regulations as national implementation of the EU directive on data protection.

It is why, the various forum (EHTEL, Gastein etc) are so important.

3.- The implementation plans must be endorsed by all the partners and not only by the technicians.

4.- Some accompanying measures must be promoted simultaneously:

4.1. Initial and continuos education: it is the first priority for convincing the users.

4.2. Finance plan for reimbursement purposes.

4.3. Based on the classical telecom infrastructure, additional specific infrastructure for example for cabling hospitals.

4.4. Assessment including user acceptance of the selected products, protocols and use.

5.- Certification and quality insurance.

Like pharmaceutical products, any HC telematics products must be certified as medically cost beneficial, technically interoperable and finally beneficial for the patient, independent neutral bodies can be useful for doing that.

6.- Internet.

Internet exist and is growing fastly. Regulations are based on the market, no more, but some special regulations are requested in the domain of security and dataprotection issues. As a minimum, Codes of Conduct must be defined.

7.- Patient rights.

Not a special issue, excepted the respect of infoethical regulation and the new huge facilities to disseminate the medical files or to access to the medical files.

8.- Social exclusion.

It is no longer a financial problem in the EU, and apparently not a strong issue today excepted the risk of gap generated by lack of education.

9.- Global output.

In the same ways, the manufacture process, the services process etc were gradually reinvented during the last 10 years by the introduction of telematics, in the same way the various health systems must be reinvented: no alternative choice.

It is an unique opportunity to put the citizen in the centre of the new health systems.

10.- Financial issues.

A lot of to day-existing products are demonstrated as cost beneficial but the implementation plans are limited by some outdated regulations (ex. Coding systems, bills in a real written forms, no acceptance of electronics signature etc). Regional or national revisions are requested.

11.- Enlargement opportunities.

Finally, the countries candidates for enlargement are lucky.

They can implement rapidly the beneficial HC telematics technologies without negative pressure from the various establishments.