Updated: Aug 26, 1998
This is the most recent structured information on this project. Complementary data can be found on previous documents
HEALTHPLANS Supporting National and Regional Health Authorities in plans to Introduce Healthcare Telematics

Overview

The objective of the HEALTHPLANS concerted action is that of establishing a Users Forum that will put together key national Healthcare Authorities and decision makers, that are already users or are interested in healthcare telematics, to share requirements, information, experiences and plans for the establishment of healthcare telematics services. In this Forum National, Regional and Local Healthcare Authorities will participate together with representatives of the Industrial sector (both large IT&T companies and SME’s) and of End-users Organisations (healthcare professionals, patients and citizens). By reaching consensus on common requirements and methodology, the proposed concerted action will support the Telematics Programme in monitoring the progress and validating the results of the pilot experiments. It will also help raise the attention of influential national decision makers on the potential of healthcare telematics and will catalyse strategic actions to develop national and regional plans for implementation.

Three streams of action are planned, that will respectively:

1. analyse the participation of public healthcare authorities, industry and users organisations in the national and international R&D programmes (with special focus on the EC Healthcare Telematics Programme) and establish a directory of interested participants and contact persons;

2. critically review requirements, priorities and strategies expressed by the Healthcare Authorities and end-users organisations, and match them with the offer of products and services announced or planned by the industrial sector;

3. foster the development of coherent plans for implementation of healthcare telematics at the local, regional, national and international levels. The participants will be organised in working groups, dealing with the above streams of action.

The working groups will be initially established with the participation of representatives of the applicants organisations, and will be extended to the participation of all countries of the European Union. One or more WEB-servers will be established in the participating countries to provide the infrastructure for collection of informationdiscussion and dissemination. Also workshops, round-tables and video-conferences will be regularly organised on selected topics to favour discussion and consensus among interested parties. The results will be published both electronically and in paper form for dissemination and education.

Connections will be made with the existing experiments and pilot activities in this sector, especially with those funded by the EC and by national authorities, so to make all interested parties aware of what is ongoing and planned, and to help avoiding duplication and waste of efforts. It is also expected that the concerted action will provide the Health Authorities and the industry with validated indications and guidelines for the identification of priorities and planning of investments in this sector and will assist the responsibles of the national and EC-funded R&D Programmes in identifying the correct set of performance and success indicators to measure the impact of their activity and in validating the results of the pilots experiments.

Purpose and objectives

The Telematics Applications Programme financially supports international consortia in developing and establishing enlarged, visible pilots of key telematic services. These pilots are designed as multi-site and multi-sector, so to demonstrate that the proposed solutions are not only technically feasible at a prototype stage, but are also cost/effective, organisationally acceptable and beneficial when applied at an enlarged scale, and that for many aspects a harmonised European approach is more valid than several fragmented national or regional approaches.

The role of the proposed concerted action will be that of assisting users groups (healthcare authorities, the industrial sector and the end-user organisations) participating in the pilot and implementation activities funded by the European Commission, and in most cases also supported by national and regional R&D funds. These kay actors will find in the concerted action a forum where the reach consensus on principles and requirements, where to develop a common methodology to monitor the progress and validate the results of the pilot experiments, and where to share information, experiences and plans for the establishment of healthcare telematics systems and services.

It is expected that these combined actions will bring the potential of healthcare telematics to the attention of the right actors and decision makers and catalyse strategic actions to develop national and regional plans for an enlarged implementation.

Benefits for the national and regional health authorities

On the side of the political decision-makers, the on-going reorganisation of the healthcare system makes the national healthcare authorities and other actors at the metropolitan and regional and macro-regional level the natural interface for this action. The regional level, through commonly agreed guidelines and on the basis of the principle of interoperability of the developed solutions. The roleof the Regional Authorities will be further enhanced by leveraging with other instruments for the regional development and by aligning with related regional and national policies.

Helping the telematics industry in addressing the healthcare market

On the side of industry, the objective will be to overcome the existing fragmentation and to shape a wider European market. The development of specific healthcare telematic services must rely on the fact that a common telematic infrastructure is already made available by the telecom operators region- or nation-wide for generic applications. The supporting actions should be concentrated on the layers of the value added services and of the applications, by developing and validating dedicated services that could be plugged on the existing infrastructure. On the longer run it could be demonstrated that the traffic and the value-added services generated by the healthcare sector may call for some specific tailoring of the generic services (such as dedicated security systems, access control, closed-circuit groups bridging cabled and mobile networks, and so on).

Focus on the needs of the end-users

On the side of end-users, including citizens, patients and professional, the focus will be on identifying those aspects that are critical in ensuring acceptance of the developed solutions by professionals, patients and citizens in general. Social, legal, cultural, professional and ethical aspects must be taken into account, to remove possible obstacles and to ensure a widely. Dissemination of and perception of the benefits of healthcare telematics for all actors involved. Dissemination of and continuous education of professionals and citizens are key elements to reach these objectives.

Results

The HEALTHPLANS concerted action intends to bring together representativs of:

1. the decision makers and the local/national authorities that are responsible for health policy and investments and that will ultimately take the decision for implementation, to make sure that their requirements are clearly expressed and met;

2. the industrial partners, public and private, that will also necessarily make their part of the investments, to be sure that they understand the potential and specificity of the sector, and that the planned and developed products address the key strategic needs of the healthcare authorities;

3. citizens and professionals, that will at the end use the telematic applications, to be sure that the solutions are friendly and will be socially accepted. Building a directory of interested organisations

A first stream of activity of the proposed concerted action will be to establish an international directory of:

Healthcare Authorities (at the national, regional and local level) that have demonstrated their interest in healthcare telematics, either by directly participating in the calls for proposals of the Healthcare Telematics Programme (both successfully and unsuccessfully) or by establishing or planning local experiments or pilots, or by being ectively involved in more mature implementation programs;

Industrial Partners that have equally shown interest in participating in the Programme, or have announced or are actively marketing products and services targeted to the healthcare telematics sector;

End-user Organisations (professionals, patients and citizens) that have demonstrated interest in the subject, and can facilitate a common approach to reach awareness of the potential and acceptance of the results, and can assist in the dissemination and education activity in the different countries.

Analysing requirements and strategic priorities

The second stream of activity will be the collection and critical analysis of the rquirements, priorities and strategic milestones expressed by the Healthcare Authorities, of the existing and potential offer of products and services by the industrial sector, and the end-user expectations and acceptance. Developing regional and national master plans for healthcare telematics implementation The third stream of action will be the development of models of Healthcare Telematics Plans for implementation at the local, regional and national levels.

The plans will:

address all infrastructural, financial and organisational aspects for both pilots and enlarged implementation;

consider the needs for Integration and interfacing with the existing solutions and the re-engineering aspects of existing organisations and services;

will highlight the key parameters and bottlenecks that need to be kept under control in the process;

provide a common framework of structured experiences to decision makers and to health authorities, to facilitate the setting up of pilots and to speed up the transition to full-scale implementation.

The transfer of the results achieved in pilot and implementation experiences to other countries and regions will be facilitated via careful design of parametric and scaleable models. In the implementation phase, substantial savings can be obtained by sharing a common infrastructure and a number of applications between potential users. It is a key aspect to identify well in advance the possible commonalities and integrations and the avoidable overlappings between different users groups (medical specialities, etc.) and with telematic applications in other sectors, also to avoid duplication of architectural layers.

List of deliverables

List of participants

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