The Med-e-Tel forum is endorsed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Health and National eHealth Agency, the European Commission, the International Council of Nurses (ICN), European Junior Doctors (EJD), and works together with an even wider range of local and international partners who are all involved in Telemedicine and eHealth research, development, funding or implementation.

Governments, healthcare providers and health insurers worldwide, are turning towards Telemedicine and eHealth solutions as one of the tools to cope with the effects of today's ageing society and tomorrow's reduced healthcare workforce and to address the constant pressure on healthcare budgets and the need for more qualitative and cost effective healthcare. There is already a lot of experience and good practice that has been built up around the world, and there is a need for sharing these practical experiences across borders and across professions, hence the role of the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth and its Med-e-Tel event.

The Med-e-Tel inaugural ceremony on Wednesday morning April 9th will include a welcome address on behalf of the Luxembourg Government, represented by the Minister of Social Security as well as a senior official of the Ministry of Health. Also Med-e-Tel's collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to grow. WHO will be represented at Med-e-Tel by the Coordinator of the Organization's ePORTUGUESe Program.

This year, Med-e-Tel unveils a new collaboration, with the Luxembourg Government's "Agence eSanté" (National eHealth Agency), who have organized two special round table sessions on "The Integration of eHealth in Healthcare Services" and on "eHealth and Interoperability", and they are also setting up a Luxembourg pavilion in the Med-e-Tel exhibition area together with partner organizations who are involved in the development and implementation of the nation's electronic health record (DMP - le Dossier de Soins Partagé).

Continuing the innovation from last year, a special session on women titled "Women, eHealth and Telemedicine at All Ages of Life: From Birth to Old Age" is presented by the Women Observatory for eHealth (WeObservatory) and the ISfTeH Working Group on Women (WoW). The session is a collaboration with "Connecting Nurses" and "Connecting Midwives", with support from Sanofi.

Two EU project consortia (RECAP and eMedic) will be actively engaged in the conference program, focusing on intelligent decision support systems for chronic disease management and on teleconsultation/telemonitoring initiatives in the Baltic Sea region. The European Junior Doctors are also back in force at Med-e-Tel with a view on Junior (but also Senior) Doctors' perspective on eHealth.

"I have often called evidence on eHealth, or the business case for eHealth, the Higgs Boson of our area of endeavor. We know it is out there - all the theories and some of the practice indicate that it exists. We just cannot seem to definitively identify it," says Yunkap Kwankam, Executive Director of the ISfTeH. "All the speakers and exhibitors at Med-e-Tel, actually hold part of that evidence in their hands - through the knowledge and experience they have built up over the past years in working with or researching telemedicine and eHealth applications. So the presentation and sharing of these experiences at Med-e-Tel will undoubtedly bring us a little closer to that body of evidence."

For further information, please visit: http://www.medetel.eu

Related news articles:

• Med-e-Tel's Profile