Microsoft was one of the sponsors of the symposium organized by the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) in Brussels on the 21st, 22nd of October 2009. EHTEL mission is to be the "grid" which creates trust, coherence and consensus between all stakeholders who are interested in using ICT as an enabling tool. Started as an industry initiative, supported by the European Commission 10 years ago, EHTEL managed to contribute to many political initiatives (eHealth Action Plan, EC recommendation on interoperability of EHRs in cross-border care, Telemedicine communication) and implementation projects.
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The Anniversary Symposium was hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The EESC is a consultative body that gives representatives of Europe's socio-occupational interest groups, and others, a formal platform to express their points of views on EU issues. Its opinions are forwarded to the larger EU institutions - the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament.
EHTEL pursues the vision of enabling personal wellbeing and positioning patients/ citizens at the very centre of health and social care. EHTEL expects that eHealth infrastructures and services will more or less "disappear" from the perception of patients and health professionals, hence becoming a fully integral part of health care. This would enable health care systems to deliver smarter Patient Care" where:
Through its 10th anniversary symposium EHTEL took a look forward at the next steps of the eHealth evolution.
I was part of the industrial panel trying to explain the vision of Microsoft in healthcare:
The main facts were around the necessity to consider healthcare as an integrated system and not as a collection of separate departments (administrative, medical, research, financial etc.) and processes (prevention, care, rehabilitation) and not even as a collection of actors (patient or provider or payer centered). This vision allows us to model implementation in eHealth taking into account a multitude of factors and propose solutions supporting this holistic vision.
Today's realities (population aging, spur of chronic diseases and lack of sustainability of health systems, empowerment or at least increased interest from individual in managing their own health, exponential grow in available knowledge…) made us propose a range of solutions in order to make possible early prevention of chronic diseases, change of behavior and health lifestyle, managing of acute episodes and supporting population health intelligence (epidemiology and statistics).
The solutions that Microsoft proposes today, together with more than 5000 partners in Europe, are underpinning the Personal Health & Wellness, Condition Management and Population Health Intelligence.
Typical solutions in the area of Personal Health & Wellness are the Health Portals, CRM solutions and the HealthVault platform.
Microsoft Health Portals make it easier to integrate information from different systems; work on documents and information with peers, colleagues, and patients/citizens; and distribute that information to individuals, departments, agencies and other entities. Designed for all users at a personal, team, and organizational level, Microsoft Health Portal Solutions facilitate workflow and processes, provide access to information and transactions of all kinds, reduce the “hassle-factor,” and improve communication and collaboration in a format that helps to ensure well-informed decisions and improve efficiency.
In Personal Health & Wellness, portals can be used to:
Increasingly, patients and citizens are recognizing the need to take control of their health. They need to track and manage chronic conditions, as well as their progress toward health and fitness goals. And they expect to access medical records and prescription information online from anywhere, then share selected information with family or caregivers, as well as their doctors.
With Personal Health solutions from Microsoft such as HealthVault,, all the health information could be in one place. People can securely store copies of their health records obtained from their doctors, health plan, pharmacies, government, and employers, and they can upload information from health and fitness devices. Then they can share that information with healthcare providers and trainers; as well as access online products and services. Sharing relevant information helps patients and their care and services providers work more effectively together to improve the patient’s health.
Health organizations can also use HealthVault’s shared data platform to provide patients with innovative health and wellness tools and services to help patients take preventive health steps and lead healthier lifestyles. By connecting and sharing information more easily in a secure manner, both health professionals and patients can be more proactive in improving patients’ health and wellness.
With Condition Management solutions for Case Management and Caregiver Collaboration , health professionals can efficiently and proactively help citizens’ manage their health conditions to minimize acute episodes, hospitalization and expensive procedures.
Health professionals can more quickly and easily predict needs and modify activities to help prioritize and refer patients based on current conditions and past history with predictive modeling tools.
An integrated view of patient health status, lets health professionals and case workers reduce duplicated efforts and better manage cases. And automated care coordination activities between provider organizations with customized process workflows, can also reduce workloads while helping to improve patient outcomes.
Caregivers and case workers can communicate and share information more efficiently and effectively so they can collaboratively make knowledge-driven decisions that improve the treatment and management of citizens’ health conditions.
And, automated communication tools help health professionals schedule appointments, plan post-treatment follow-ups, and set up alerts for recursive maintenance to improve communication before, after and between office visits without adding administrative burden.
When both patients and their care team have better access to all the relevant information, everyone involved can make better decisions and provide better, more proactive care.
Population Health Intelligence solutions can be used for activities such as Measuring and Monitoring Population Health; Disease Preparation and Response; and Managing Quality and Health Outcomes.
Tools such as our family of Business Intelligence solutions and Microsoft Amalga provide easy-to-use, flexible technology tools that will help your health organization:
•Gain contextual insight into clinical key performance indicators (KPIs) across organizations and agencies to improve treatment outcomes and patient/citizen health, improve immunization rates, reduce disease outbreaks and episodes of illness, minimize chronic disease complications and treatment, and better control healthcare expenditures.
•Track and analyze performance metrics for health programs, such as health and wellness service lines (e.g. weight management, nutrition) and chronic disease lines (e.g. cancer, heart, COPD, and diabetes).
•Improve disease prevention testing and adherence.
•Create executive dashboards to monitor performance against objectives and analyze demographic information and trends to align service offerings.
•And more easily identify & analyze recurring episodes of illness and track immunization rates and disease outbreaks.
The panel conclusions were that technology is already existing, we need to do more efforts in describing the sustainable models, involve the health professionals and payers in developing new business architectures. Moreover, the eHealth specialists should participate more in health professional meetings around the world, in order to diminish the perception of eHealth as a separate field…
Dr Octavian Purcarea
Global Solution Manager
Worldwide Health Team
Microsoft Corp.