Last update: September 17, 1997
The four primary partners in the EHTO Consortium.

• CENTIS
• RAMIT
• CNEH
• IHC

CENTIS Co-ordinating Partner headed by Maria Laires.

Maria has responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Observatory and has created the concept of the Central Business Centre (CBC), which co-ordinates EHTO and ensures the delivery of services for which the Observatory has been set up. The tasks, assigned to individual members of the team, contribute specifically to the Observatory's goal of providing a supportive European service to the health sector in the use of telematics. In order to perform EHTO's global work, and to serve the interests of its clients, the Observatory will bring together diverse, but complementary, layers of information where strategic and operational functions interface, constantly. The CBC will develop activities, such as 'consensus formation' and the 'promotion of services' which are essential to the future of the Observatory as an independent European institution, following the end of the three-year period of the project.

In taking forward EHTO as an "innovation and marketing" organisation, the CBC will handle not only the tactical issues related to the current work in the Observatory, but also take responsibility for the promotion and implementation of new strategies in the Observatory, to influence a pro-active approach and to define both the 'global' strategy and 'user-oriented' strategies. The Observatory Consortium believes that the growing importance of the health telematics market demands consensus formation, the success of which will be determined by the committed involvement and practical collaboration of the different actors in health telematics. EHTO has a dual role in assisting with consensus formation and giving its support to the promotion of its results in the European and world-wide markets. The quality of the results of the Observatory's activities will be a valuable instrument in the process of self-evaluation of its impact in the sector and a key to consolidate its European credibility.

Maria describes the EHTO team as one which possesses high technical and organisational competence, and an esprit de corps that reflects the good working relationships that have developed in the very short time since the Office opened in early February. The view from the Observatory is that they are confident they can deliver, but external incentives and the exchange of ideas are fundamental to its success. Together with its clients, the Observatory will find appropriate solutions to their needs. Given this information about the Observatory, don't hesitate to join the team on its exciting trip through the Information Society and be part of the creation of a new scenario in the European health telematics sector.

RAMIT

• Scientific Research and Development in Medical Informatics, including the development of Telematics Standards for the Healthcare sector.
• Participation, within the framework of objective 1, in the research programmes of the Commission of the European Union (CEU), particularly DGIII, DGXIII and DGXII.
• Participation, within the framework of objective 1, in the standarisation activities within CEN, CENELEC, ETSI, EWOS, WEEB, ISO, IEC and CCIIT.
• Certification of products, within the framework of objective 1.
• Sponsorship or supporting initiatives that promote scientific developments, industrialisation and exploitation.

Professor Georges DeMoor

The membership of RAMIT is restricted. President is Prof. Dr. Georges J.E. De Moor and Directors are, amongst others, the Rector of the University and the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (qualitate qua).
The working-team in RAMIT is multidisciplinary: medical doctors, engineers, informaticians, statisticians and secretarial staff. Recent activities include successful projects in the framework of programmes such as AIM, COMETT, TEMPUS, LRE, RACE, VALUE, EUREKA, TEDIS, COST, INFOSEC, CEN, EWOS, TIDE, LEONARDO DA VINCI and G-7.
RAMIT will be primarily responsible for the following functions of EHTO:

1. Information/Knowledge base of health care telematics at the Observatory, and making this information as accessible as possible using the Internet and WWW.
2. Demo Site - Establishing a common state-of-the-art communication infrastructure.
3. Consultancy and Exploitation issues relating to the Observatory

Christine was trained as a hospital manager in the United Kingdom, where she held a number of senior posts. In 1987 she was appointed to the Health Division of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where she worked for six years with experts from many European countries on a variety of subjects related to the organisation of health care. In particular she worked on training for health information systems, and on legal and ethical issues relating to the use of health information systems. It was during this period that she first came into contact with the Commission, since members of the AIM team participated in this work. Subsequently she served as a technical auditor in the evaluation of health informatics projects. Since 1993 Christine has worked for the French Ministry of Health and for the National Centre for Hospital Equipment (CNEH) in Paris. During this period she acted as rapporteur to the AIM Requirements Board and was appointed on two occasions as consultant in health telematics to WHO (Europe). She has also been involved in a number of Commission-funded health informatics/telematics projects, both as partner and as project manager. CNEH will be primarily responsible for the following:

1. Market and Innovation Watch of emerging new technologies and telecommunications developments.
2. Quality Management of the services of EHTO both from a technical and user perspective.
3. Administration of the project.

Headed by Mr Michael Flahive, who has had extensive publication experience in Health Telematics both in the U.S. and Ireland, IHC is a Publishing Company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland. The company's primary responsibility to the consortium will be the publication of the EHTO Journal.

Michael Flahive

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