VIVIANE REDING opening speech

Introduction to the Ministerial Round Table
(“e Health 2005” Conference, Trömso, Norway – May 23, 2005)

Dear Ms Smith
Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen

It is my great pleasure to join you here today at this third high-level European conference on e Health. I am proud to introduce this Round Table – at which the European Ministers responsible for e Health are meeting.

eHealth is a priority for the European Commission. We are convinced that information and communication technologies can help to achieve more efficient, effective, and responsive health systems in Europe.

This conference forms part of the e Health action plan. This plan – adopted by the European Commission a year ago – aims to create, by 2010 a borderless European health information space. ( continuing ….)

Putting this plan in action requires cooperation between Member States:

•  to exchange information on progress on our eHealth roadmaps and

•  to learn lessons from each other so we move forward quickly and efficiently.

Talking together and learning from each other is important and that is why this roundtable – indeed, this high-level forum – is crucial to the eHealth Action Plan.

Priorities for e Health

Let me start the discussion by giving my aims for e Health. There are three :

•  eHealth for better, more accessible and more efficient health services.

•  eHealth that is transEuropean so that health care is available wherever people need care.

•  eHealth research to keep Europe at the forefront of innovative medicine and health care.

1 eHealth - better, accessible and efficient services

eHealth is not about technology, it is about improving access to health and making services better . This means putting information at the fingertips of the people that need it: doctors, nurses, carers and patients. ..

eHealth is already delivering information to people so that they are better informed and can manage their own health. Let me give you an example, the French national health insurance scheme for the self-employed enables over 3 million people to consult their own healthcare notebook. Since summer 2004, French law has proposed a personal medical dossier – electronic in format – for all French citizens. This is e-democracy in action, bringing information to the people..

It is also about raising efficiency to create patient-friendly services. Another example, in Ireland from this year all electronic health records have been linked into a single health system. Records are available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Time is not lost re-entering the same data time after time. Clinical decision-making has improved. Unnecessary tests have been eliminated. Appointment booking is more efficient. Waiting lists have been reduced.

To me, this is what a European approach to ehealth should be about: patients not paperwork!

2 eHealth – a transEuropean health information space

eHealth offers us a possibility of health services that are seamless, that move with people as they move. Europeans are increasingly mobile and health services have to move with them.

We need eHealth services that are interoperable and transborder. From this summer, the Baltic Health Network will link up Scandinavia to create a northern European health information space. This is surely an example from which we can learn and upon which we can build

3 eHealth – research to keep Europe at the forefront of medicine and healthcare innovation

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for health are essential for improving wellbeing and quality of life. New possibilities are opening up all the time and Europe leads in many areas of ICT for health.

Let me give some examples.

•  Wearable sensors that monitor bio-medical data allowing real time tracking of a patient's condition. For example, the MyHeart project -supported by my Information Society Technologies Programme - allows patients to self-manage cardiovascular conditions by streaming information to them on the effects of physical activity, eating, sleep needs and stress.

•  Computer simulations of body tissues and organs to allow the construction of personal 3-dimensional models of the patient. In surgery, for example, procedures can be planned in detail making operations safer and less stressful on the body. Such techniques are also useful for training. The MeDiMed project from the Czech republic is an example and is on display in the conference exhibition,.

Today, Europe is in a leadership position on Health ICT We need to maintain and reinforce this position. First, investment in research means better medicine and better health care. But also, it is important for growth and jobs.

But this position is vulnerable. In general, Europe under invests in ICT research. Despite evidence that ICT are the most important drivers of innovation, growth and jobs, Europe puts only 20% of its research spending into ICT. Other leading OECD countries put 30%.

More investment is needed in ICT in general and in health care ICT in particular. We must do this at the level of the European Union but also among the Member States.

Since 1989, the Community research and technology budget in e Health has grown tenfold. In the Second Framework Programme of our information technologies research area, we invested just €20 million in information technology for healthcare. By 2002, in the Fifth Framework Programme, we were investing €200 million in the programme specifically on e Health. The number of projects which we co-financed grew from 30 to 130.

In the Sixth Framework Programme, we have raised the scale of the projects. The Information Society Technologies programme now has twenty new projects, receiving between €340,000 to €16 million of Community co-finance.

It is these kinds of creative applications that we see as providing an exciting new future in ICT for eHealth. We want to see this happen in industry and commerce, in corporations both large and small, in research institutions, universities, manufacturing companies, and fleet-footed new start-ups. And we want to see both the Commission – and the Member States – put more money into supporting such initiatives.

Supporting e Health and improved healthcare

The European Commission is proud to be associated with the initiatives that I have cited today, whether it be through sponsoring research, support to exchange of best practice or promoting the European e Health action plan.

In fact, we should all be proud of our results and ambitious in our plans. In particular, we need to tell the world of the importance of e Health for better, more accessible and more efficient health care.

We are on the threshold of building a new phase of development in the European e Health Area. What enormous possibilities it can bring! Lets move this agenda forward together.