Building telemedicine bridges in Europe

Improving awareness of e-health and telemedicine technologies in EU pre-Accession countries has forged links between the EU's Newly Associated States (NAS) and ‘older' members that remain strong today.

The process involved linking leading health telematics centres in the EC and NAS in an active network of cooperation and knowledge sharing. A Centre of Competence, established at Cracow Telemedicine Centre of Excellence in Poland, coordinated publishing activities, events, training and intake of solutions from cooperating partners within the EU and NAS.

“Generally, we aimed at preparing the platform for communication between ‘old' Member States of the European Union and New Member States,” says Dr Mariusz Duplaga of Jagiellonian University Medical College in Cracow, Poland, representative of the PRO-ACCESS IST project team.

The project involved health professionals, health managers, technical advisors, industry representatives, and academia communities promoting e-health development.

“We asked to join in project activities with participants from leading medical informatics, health telematics and e-health centres in Europe, such as the Centre of Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Development in Trondheim, Norway. In this way, they could share their vision of e-health and their experience in the field with people from New Member States.”

The project mobilised people involved in e-health development from Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and Bulgaria, who formed informal networks for further cooperation in e-health development and made contacts throughout Europe.

PRO-ACCESS coordinated several awareness raising events, such as conferences and workshops, oriented on the critical issues in development and implementation of telematics applications for medical partners. Several publications were prepared with input from professionals participating in project activities or cooperating in some way.

“This was a good opportunity for e-health environments from Central and Eastern Europe to present their projects and examples of their e-health implementations,” says Duplaga. However, he notes it is a commonly shared opinion among health management staff and central government representatives that e-health is a luxury not accessible for countries preoccupied with transforming their economies.

Although the project is over, Duplaga says he continues to receive requests for information and materials related to the project activities. He adds that contacts from PRO-ACCESS activities are maintained and people are continuing to work on common undertakings.

“My belief is that projects like PRO-ACCESS will have long-term positive effects. Real impact on cooperation development and environment mobilisation is already evident.”

Contact:
Dr Mariusz Duplaga
Chief of Computer Laboratory
Department of Medicine
Jagiellonian University Medical College
Skawinska Str. 8
PL-31-066 Cracow
Poland
Tel: +48-124305339
Fax: +48-124305115
Email: mmduplag@cyf-kr.edu.pl

Source: Based on information from PRO-ACCESS