European Institute for Health Records - Introduction
The Myproject Machine - https://www.eurorec.org/eurorec2006/text.cfm
doctor checking a child
EuroRec 2006 Annual Conference

“Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs) and Certification”
(10th of October, 2006, Geneva, Geneva Palexpo, Mont-Blanc hall)

Recommendations from the panel discussion "Connecting Leaders in Technology and Healthcare" about Certification of Electronic Medical Record Systems.

To download the presentation, click on the speaker’s name

EuroRec annual Conference 2006Georges De Moor opened, on behalf of EuroRec, the 5th EuroRec Annual Conference for more than 140 registrants. The attractive programme enticed everyone away from the lake, reflecting the lovely autumn sun. François Mennerat, Secretary General of Eurorec, completed the introduction by describing the EuroRec Institute and its future services (ppt). This year’s conference focused on Quality Labelling and Certification of EHRs in Europe and abroad. The speakers representing Standardisation bodies, Industry, European Commission, Academics and Hospitals made presentations on different issues related to the conference topic.
Octavian Purcarea (E.C.), replacing Anne Lehouck, presented new strategies to be launched by the European Standardisation Bodies. Gerard Freriks (TNO) offered the audience a tutorial about the role of the European Standards. Alain Maskens (Health-One) represented the SME-industry and described the importance of Quality Labelling and Certification for the software vendors.

Ilias Iakovidis The afternoon session started by Ilias Iakovidis (E.C.) who was underlining the importance of Quality Labelling and Certification again by raising the fact this European initiative must support the quality of EHRs. Quality Labelling and Certification should not become an instrument for non-experienced companies to increase their sales by just complying with the lowest denominator criteria (to be avoided).
An overview of the EuroRec projects was given by Georges De Moor who mainly introduced the Q-REC project, dealing with Quality Labelling and Certification in Europe. Knut Bernstein (ProRec Denmark) described the preliminary list of EHR certification criteria produced by Q-REC and methods used to compose this list.
Asuman Dogac (METU, SRDC, Turkey) introduced the RIDE project: “A Roadmap for Interoperability of eHealth Systems in Support of COM 356 with Special Emphasis on Semantic Interoperability”.
A new project, named EHR-Implement (National policies for EHR Implementation in the European area: social and organizational issues) will start in January 2007. It is supported by DG SANCO. Laurence Esterle (INSERM, France) described that the general objective of EHR-IMPLEMENT is to collect, analyse and compare broad scale EHR implementations among European countries and provide best practice, policy and strategic recommendations to facilitate EHR implementation initiatives throughout Europe.

Important topics related to the above projects are archetypes and coding schemes. The presentation of Dipak Kalra (UCL, UK) focused on the added-value of archetypes within EHR systems. Martin Severs (NHS, UK) underlined the importance of SNOMED CT as a medical coding system, while Pieter Zanstra (Semantic Health, The Netherlands) looked into the future explaining a roadmap for EHR-coding systems.

EuroRec’s conference ended with an active panel discussion, moderated by Chris Nolan (ProRec-Ireland). The theme was “Globalisation and Industry Perspectives”. John O’Brien (National Hospitals Office, Director, Ireland) had the honour to open the discussion by expressing his expectations from the Process of EHRs Quality Labelling and Certification.

EuroRec annual Conference 2006The other members of the panel were:

  • Ilias Iakovidis, European Commission, DG Information Society
  • Georges De Moor, EuroRec
  • Dennis Niebergal, Canada
  • Kees Smedema, COCIR, The Netherlands
  • Jean François Penciolelli, ORACLE, France
  • Alain Maskens, Health One, Belgium
  • Bernd Blobel, ProRec, Germany
  • Ian Reinecke, Australia

EuroRec thanks speakers, other contributers and the audience for their participation.