6 - 8 April 2011, Luxembourg.
In a presentation during the Med-e-Tel 2011 Opening Session on Wednesday April 6th, Peteris Zilgalvis, Head of the ICT for Health Unit at the European Commission's Information Society Directorate-General, will provide some insights into the European Commission's plans on the Digital Agenda which is all about new ways of working and creating partnerships such as the European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) to help to get innovations into the hands of people and businesses as quickly as possible. These EIPs will be aimed at grand challenges such as aspects of climate change, energy and food security, or supporting an ageing population.

The Digital Agenda for Europe does also focus very strongly on eHealth in order to create sustainable healthcare and ICT-based support for dignified and independent living. One of the key actions in the Agenda is to undertake pilot activities to equip Europeans with secure online access to their medical health data by 2015 and to achieve widespread deployment of telemedicine services by 2020.

A first concrete EIP on Active and Healthy Ageing has already been launched. It's about bringing together the practitioners and recievers of care, along with the providers of solutions with the goal of providing a better quality of life and seeing how ICT can be used to achieve this.

This EIP will focus on prevention and health promotion (medical technology, medicines and treatment for age related chronic diseases and others), integrated health and social care for the elderly (improving home-based care and selfcare; and new large-scale, innovative solutions for long-term care of the elderly), and independent, active living for elderly people supported by innovative products, devices and services.

Find out more about these important European Commission initiatives during the Med-e-Tel opening session on 6 April 2011.

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

Related news articles:

• Med-e-Tel's Profile

About Med-e-Tel
Med-e-Tel focuses on ehealth and telemedicine applications and a wide range of other medical ICT applications and on the convergence of information and communication technology with medical applications, which lead to higher quality of care, cost reductions, workflow efficiency, and widespread availability of healthcare services.

The "Med" in Med-e-Tel stands for healthcare services (institutional and home based care, prevention and education) and for medical products and equipment (medical imaging equipment, monitoring devices, electronic health records, etc.).
The "e" stands for the electronic and IT industry and services (hard- & software, internet, e-mail, etc.).
The "Tel" stands for telecommunications (whether it is POTS, ISDN, wireless, satellite, videoconferencing, VoIP, or other).

For further information, please visit www.medetel.eu.