Jacqueline Surugue has been appointed as co-chair for users on the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise steering committee.
Surugue is a hospital pharmacist from the Poitou Charentes region of France, where she heads the pharmacy department at the 1,200 bed Centre Hospitalier George Renon in Niort.
She is also president of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists and a number of other pharmacy bodies.
As co-chair for users, Surugue will join Peter Kuenecke, co-chair for vendors, in jointly directing the activities and operations of IHE Europe, which promotes healthcare interoperability and standards for communication between systems.
It also runs “connectathons” and testing of systems to make sure they conform to agreed specifications. Surugue said that in her new role she hoped to “help achieve coherent interoperability of health information systems.”