Speaking ahead of the Tromso conference, Markos Kyprianou, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection said “eHealth can empower patients and improve healthcare. Even more importantly, by reducing the scope for medical errors, it can save lives. We need a partnership between health ministers, technology providers, patient groups and health NGOs to release the full potential of eHealth in Europe. The Tromso conference is a step towards achieving that.”
”The European approach to eHealth should be about: spending euros on patients not on paperwork!” states Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media. “For example, electronic medical records can help doctors to diagnose illness and prescribe treatments more accurately, thus reducing medical errors. It also means cutting down paperwork to improve efficiency. Electronic patient referrals in Denmark are saving €1 million a year and could rise to to €3.5 million a year, if all referrals were sent electronically."
eHealth can really help empower patients. Europeans increasingly want to play an active role in decisions relating to their health. eHealth can give them the easy access to high quality health information that they need to achieve this. As part of its current eHealth action plan, the Commission will launch an EU Health Portal later this year, providing a “one stop shop” for health information produced by the EU and a gateway to the websites of national and regional health authorities and civil society groups in the health field.
The conference and exhibition will showcase eHealth success stories from across Europe, including a number of projects fostering eHealth applications, which have been co-financed by the EU’s Public Health Programme and Information Society Technologies research.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 24.05.2005
