WIREDGOV

eHealth Week, Europe’s leading eHealth event, is taking place in Amsterdam this week from 8 to 10 June. The event revolves around patients, under the theme ‘You – at the heart of transition’. In the past, eHealth policies have mainly focused on institutions and IT systems, but this time, the emphasis is on eHealth users.

High Level E-Health Conference 

eHealth Week brings together government and ministerial delegations as well as the private sector. Its aims are to encourage productive discussions on how these two areas complement each other and to discover what lessons can be learned. Services and solutions will be on hand for testing and trying out. The Beurs van Berlage, a historic location in the centre of Amsterdam, is serving as the venue for eHealth Week.

Empowering people to manage their own health

Patients, consumers, doctors, nurses and informal carers have been given a prominent role in the conference, reflecting the emphasis on eHealth users in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. In the opinion of Paul Timmers, Director of the Sustainable & Secure Society Directorate in the European Commission: ‘Digital solutions can empower citizens to manage their health, while health and care systems can improve their efficiency and cope with increasing demand from an ageing population. eHealth saves time and costs, uses resources more efficiently and avoids duplication, and improves outcomes for patients.’

Meeting user needs

‘Empowering people’, ‘Trust & standards’ and ‘Social innovation & transition’ are the three main topics. ‘Empowering people’ is about enabling both sick and healthy citizens to play a more active role in managing their own health. It will also explore how elderly people can continue to live independently and how eHealth applications can meet user needs more effectively.

Trust and innovation

The objective of the theme ‘Trust & standards’ is to exchange knowledge on promoting and enhancing trust in health IT systems and on ways to increase the use of standards in eHealth. ‘Social innovation and transition’ will encourage the implementation, scale and use of eHealth by looking at where, why and how implementation and upscaling have been successfully achieved in the past and how best practices can be replicated.

Carers and robots

Over 2,000 international experts in IT and health care, as well as delegations from public institutions, professional bodies and patient organisations are expected to participate.eHealth Week is an official event of the Netherlands’ Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The event is jointly organised by the Dutch Ministry of Health, the European Commission and HIMSS Europe. It will include sessions on supporting informal carers, sexual health in a digital society and robots for active and assisted living.