Forschung in Österreich: wissenschaftliche Exzellenz und wirtschaftlicher Erfolg – wie geht das?

Competition for Knowledge - Status of #Research Funding in#Austria - Report of the Podium Discussion in derStandard.at (German) #VRVIS

Politik, Verwaltung und Wirtschaft folgen seit Jahren unisono dem gleichen Credo: wir brauchen mehr Wissenschaft und Forschung in unserem Land, um weiterhin im weltweiten Wettbewerb die Nase vorn zu haben. Doch folgen den hehren Worten auch handfeste Taten? Wie sieht ein fruchtbares Umfeld für erfolgreiche Forschung aus und findet diese in Österreich statt? Wie definieren wir im 21. Jahrhundert das Wechselspiel zwischen Grundlagenforschung und angewandter Forschung und welche Rolle darf die Wirtschaft und sollen öffentliche Mittel dabei spielen?

Im Rahmen einer Expertendiskussion aus Verwaltung, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft werden die Schwerpunkte der heimischen Forschungspolitik erörtert.

Termin: 15. Mai 2014, 18:30

Ort:        Haus der Musik (Innenhof), Seilerstätte 30, 1010 Wien


Keynote

• Mag. Dr. Johannes Gadner, Stellvertretender Geschäftsführer, Rat für Forschung und Technologieentwicklung

Diskussion

• Dr. Michael Losch, Sektionsleiter im Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Wirtschaft
• MR Mag. Ingolf Schädler, Sektionsleiter-Stv. im Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Innovation und Technologie
• Prof. Dr. Herbert Edelsbrunner, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria)
• Franz Tiani, Agfa HealthCare, Managing Director HE/North, Central & Eastern Europe
• DI Georg Stonawski, Geschäftsführer VRVis

Moderation: Peter Illetschko, Der Standard

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wissenschaftliche-exzellenz-und-wirtschaftlicher-erfolg-wie-geht-das-registrierung-11234652147?ref=enivtefor001&invite=NTU5MDk0Ny9pbmZvQHZydmlzLmF0LzA%3D&utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=inviteformalv2&utm_term=attend&ref=enivtefor001

Mobile Health (mHealth) survey conducted by EC

Recently the European Commission published the Green Paper on mobile Health ("mHealth") announced in the eHealth Action Plan 2012-20203. The purpose is to is to launch a broad stakeholder consultation on this subject. The document analyses mHealth potential to maintain and improve patients' health and well-being and encourage their empowerment. It also considers the potential of mHealth and its technological aspects and presents the issues where stakeholder input is sought. Interested parties are invited to submit their views in response to the above questions to CNECT-GREEN-PAPER-mHealth@ec.europa.eu  until 3 July 2014. 

Questions asked in the Green Paper:

• Which specific security safeguards in mHealth solutions could help to prevent unnecessary and unauthorised processing of health data in an mHealth context?
• How could app developers best implement the principles of “data minimisation” and of  "data protection by design, and “data protection by default” in mHealth apps?
• What measures are needed to fully realise the potential of mHealth generated "Big Data" in the EU whilst complying with legal and ethical requirements?
• Are safety and performance requirements of lifestyle and wellbeing apps adequately covered by the current EU legal framework?
• Is there a need to strengthen the enforcement of EU legislation applicable to mHealth by competent authorities and courts; if yes, why and how?
• What good practices exist to better inform end-users about the quality and safety of mHealth solutions (e.g. certification schemes)?
• Which policy action should be taken, if any, to ensure/verify the efficacy of mHealth solutions?
• How to ensure the safe use of mHealth solutions for citizens assessing their health and wellbeing?
• Do you have evidence on the uptake of mHealth solutions within EU's healthcare systems?
• What good practices exist in the organisation of healthcare to maximise the use of mHealth for higher quality care (e.g. clinical guidelines for use of mHealth)?
• Do you have evidence of the contribution that mHealth could make to constrain or curb healthcare costs in the EU?
• What policy action could be appropriate at EU, as well as at national, level to support equal access and accessibility to healthcare via mHealth?
• What, if anything, do you think should be done, in addition to the proposed actions of the eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020, in order to increase interoperability of mHealth solutions?
• Do you think there is a need to work on ensuring interoperability of mHealth applications with Electronic Health Records? And if yes by whom and how?
• What recommendations should be made to mHealth manufacturers and healthcare professionals to help them mitigate the risks posed by the use and prescription of mHealth solutions? 
• Could you provide specific topics for EU level research & innovation and deployment priorities for mHealth?
• How do you think satellite applications based on EU navigation systems (EGNOS and Galileo) can help the deployment of innovative mHealth solutions?
• Which issues should be tackled (as a priority) in the context of international cooperation to increase mHealth deployment and how?
• Which good practice in other major markets (e.g. US and Asia) could be implemented in the EU to boost mHealth deployment?
• Is it a problem for web entrepreneurs to access the mHealth market? If yes, what challenges do they face? How can these be tackled and by whom?
• If needed, how could the Commission stimulate industry and entrepreneurs involvement in mHealth, e.g. through initiatives such as "Startup Europe" or the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing?

Enterprise Imaging at WoHIT14

WoHIT14 in Nice is starting next week. This is another good opportunity to have a look at enterprise imaging. Three weeks ago, at HIMSS14, Cleveland Clinic Group shared its experience with enterprise imaging technology. This time, I'm keen to hear about the European perspective.

The Focus Group Session “Creation of the comprehensive medical record – European perspective”, is meant to exchange experience on large scale ICT implementations, concerning also  the implementation of a new EMR with an integrated enterprise imaging platform.

The session is lead by Ale Houtsma, Radboud University Medical Center Nijmegen, NL.

(Thu 3rd April - 10h15-11h00, Room Gallieni 5, Level 2 of Congress Center)

Please register here!

I look forward to meet you in Nice!

eHealth in the EU: what's the diagnosis?

Denmark (66%), Estonia (63%), Sweden and Finland (both 62%) mentioned top performing countries for #eHealth uptake in EC press release of today.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-302_en.htm

Impressions on ICIS and Agility

This post has been published earlier on Google+ !

#ECR2014 is over and I’d like to reflect on my (biased) impressions on#ICIS and IMPAX #Agility.

Only insiders may know that Agility was never meant to be a PACS. A couple of years ago we started to develop an entire new image management platform. We agreed on the internal code name ‘Agility’, never having in mind to use it as a product name. Meanwhile almost all of our new developments are based on this platform.

Radiology and cardiology solutions are marketed as ‘IMPAX Agility’, whilst all enterprise imaging solutions are now called 'ICIS' (Imaging Clinical Information System’). 

I had a close look at ICIS as extending the scope of imaging outside of radiology and cardiology is on everyone’s plan today. With ‘ICIS Store’, formerly known as IDC, we had already a proven solution over the past years. A remarkable innovation concerns the introduction of a workflow engine. Whilst it is not much of a problem to share data via XDS, it is crucial to enable the support of collaborative workflow across different disciplines and organizations. To me this module has a high potential to further improve the communication amongst all stakeholders.

The frontend, ‘ICIS View’, remains a zero-footprint solution that enables access to data from everywhere and on every device. It was shown with a couple of new features, most visibly the integration of 3D capabilities and new data sharing mechanisms. Worth to mention is also the improved support for video editing and conversion, significantly simplifying the handling. 

‘ICIS Vivid’, also available for smart phones and tablets, supports now capturing and uploading of data. This opens new possibilities, especially considering the increasing number of sensors available for mobile devices.

‘ICIS Venue’ allows the simultaneous and consolidated access of data from various repositories. This module caught the interest of clients which have to integrate data from various legacy archives.

For a selected audience we also provided a look beneath the surface of ICIS and provided an in-depth presentation of the underlying concepts.

Based on the same platform, but dedicated for the radiology and cardiology audience we have presented IMPAX Agility. You would call it a PACS.

However, having a closer look there are quite some differences to the products I have seen so far. E.g. the solution is built around a task-based workflow engine and it is interesting to see how easy different flows, for different tasks, depending on procedure, clinical data, and other parameters can be configured by means of the included graphical editor. I know such solutions from the EMR space, but I have never seen this implemented in any other RIS or PACS.

The user interface is extremely well designed. A lot of work was done, helping to reduce mouse movement and speed up the work. 

The implementation of hanging protocols itself is unquestioned outstanding. The ability to seamlessly integrate 3D views into the hanging protocols is really impressive.

Reporting is another innovation. I’d call it, a more user friendly way of structured reporting. Sections or chapters can be configured based on context specific information. All information available in the system can be used to fill section templates automatically with the content of any DICOM Tag or any HL7 field. Results of measurements can be dragged into the report. Integration of speech recognition is straight forward. It feels extremely ergonomic and fast.

The solution claims to be fully compliant with the standards. Indeed, it seems to digests everything: MF, US Measurements, waveform display, etc. If a specialty workstation would still be required, any IHE compliant workstation can be connected.

Users reported to be very pleased with the performance of the system even working from home. That makes me feel positive for deploying this solution into the cloud soon.

I missed also some features which are typically found in legacy Systems. Some have been not implemented yet and others dropped from scope. Not everything once declared to be a mandatory requirement for a PACS must make sense today. And as I said before: Agility was never meant to be a PACS!

Last but not least: The coffee at our booth looked somewhat different compared with the one we served at HIMSS. Nonetheless, it had an excellent taste.

Thanks again for joining us! I look forward to see you at #WoHIT in Nice!

Back from HIMSS14!

This post has been published earlier on Google+ and the Agfa HealthCare blog!

Back from HIMSS14 I’d like to thank everybody joining our booth last week!

Amid the wave of EHR implementations, promising the comprehensive longitudinal health record, it is evident that many doctors still miss the integration of images. Accordingly the interest of the audience in our Enterprise Imaging solution was remarkable. With the benefit of hindsight it was a wise decision to dedicate more space to ICIS at this year HIMSS.

This solution, started as a standard based VNA combined with a zero-footprint-viewer integrated in the EHR, meanwhile found also quite some copycats. However, with improved support for mobile devices, enhanced workflow support, innovative collaboration tools and new data sharing mechanisms, enhanced video support, and many more new features we could comfortably keep the gap, which is equally true for the excellent coffee served in our booth.

 

For those who did not have the chance to see ICIS at HIMSS there is good news. ECR in Vienna opens this week and WoHIT in Nice is also close.