News from Portugal

October 20, 1997

• The 3rd Congress of ¨Hospital Engineering¨ organised by the Portuguese Association for Hospital Engineering - HOSPITALIA'97 - is going to take place in Lisbon, from 23 to 26 October . This will be a forum of discussion, where hospital managers, medical doctors, nurses, engineers , architects, and health care experts from Portugal and the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa could discuss the general topic ¨Management and Technological Innovation¨. At this same time, in the exhibition HOSPITALIA'97, health care service providers , manufacturers , and representatives of most prestigious equipment (including computers systems, security systems, instruments, and equiping products), aiming to modernisation of Hospitals, Laboratories and Helthcare Centres, will show their solutions.

• The creation in Portugal (Aveiro) of the EHTO Satellite-site, has pushed on (as its first added-value result) the decision of creation of a Portuguese Association for Telemedicine. This important decision was taken by diverse type of organisations (Universities, Telecom operators, Health Ministry, Industries, Medical Associations, and other professional Associations in the sector). EHTO also has participated in the ¨founder¨group of the ¨ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEMEDICINE¨-ADT.

  The official announcement and launching of ADT will be made during the HOSPITALIA 97 Conference, where the Health Minister will give the participants her view on the importance of the expected contributions of ADT for the development of the sector , and for the deployment of telecommunications in the Health Telematics sector in Portugal.

• The Minister of Health has definitely nominated Mr Vasconcelos Cunha (former President of IGIF and national representative at the AIM Working Party) as Co-ordinator for the Portuguese Health Telematics Satellite-Site (EHTO-Pt), in charge of the global information strategy and of the promotional/commercial/ developing aspects that are relating to EHTO-PT, at national and international level.

• CET, Centro de Estudos de Telecomunicações, has hosted the Portuguese Satellite-site, in Aveiro. Ms. Lusitana Fonseca is the Web-master and also supervises the functionality and quality control of the Web content.

• The Organisers of EXPO-98 (that takes place in Lisbon, 1998) and Portugal Telecom have started to discuss a set of possible solutions aiming to the best integration of the EHTO Network into one of the EXPO Pavillions, possibly in the Advanced Tecnhologie's Pavillion (May to September 98). Meetings with EHTO, and with the European Commission (TAP, ACTS, and ESPRIT) will take place soon, to decide on the feasibility of this project.

• The Health Minister together with the Medical Council and the National Association of Pharmacies, has aproved a new model (to replace the already existing one) for the ¨medical prescriptions¨. Its main goal is to obtain more detailed and accurate information than the currently available one. One of the indirect results of the adoption of the new prescription would also enable the Health authorities to keep a follow-up of the most significant and systematic contacts and relationships between doctors and laboratories, in order to avoid lobbies and to benefit the patient.

• For the first time a Patient Card for admnistrative purposes was launched by the Ministry of Health in the public sector, with links to Pharmacies and Reimbursements. This Patient Card (which took into consideration many other different experiences already made in the European Community) will enables to establish smooth but effective links between Healthcare Centres and Hospitals, for the benefit of the patient. One of the aims is to avoid long waiting lists, and to reduce the displacement of the patients beyond the needs of medical delivery care.