Over the next few days high level delegations from at least 12 European health ministries will gather in Prague for three days of discussion and debate over the future of e-health in Europe.
The event, eHealth 2009, will focus on e-health for individuals, society and the economy.
Individuals and delegations from across Europe will be participating in the invitation only two-day ministerial e-health conference, being run by the Czech Government as part of its presidency of the European Union.
Among the delegations that have promised to participate are ministers of health from Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
E-Health Europe editor Jon Hoeksma will be reporting live from the event where he will be participating as an official rapporteur for the e-health and society strand. E-Health Europe contributing editor Philip Gratzel will also be acting as rapporteur for the conference strand e-health and individuals. The third strand of the conference will focus on e-health and the economy.
Although the formal conference is between 19-20 February, the state secretaries and directors general responsible for e-health will meet informally on the 18 February to discuss co-operation on ehealth with topics ranging from cross-border interoperability, to telemedicine and developing an e-health market.
According to the European Commission, the discussion will focus on the mechanism of cooperation between the EU Member States in eHealth, in particular interoperability of health systems.
A series of satellite sessions will be run in advance of the conference on 18 February. These will include a session organised by the European Commission on the legal foundations of telemedicine.
On the same day industry research specialist empirica will run a workshop "Monitoring and Benchmarking e-Health in Europe and the World". The event will enable experts involved in policy development in the health sector, statistical experts at European, national and regional level, from research and academia, IT and health associations and federations to compare notes on empirica’s research findings so far.
The European Institute for Medical records (EuroRec) will also hold its annual general assembly meeting the same day, following day two of the EHR-Q TN project kick-off meeting, being run 17-18 February.
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