Opportunities through voluntary eHealth applications: Quality of treatment is the measure of success for electronic health card

Lothar Späth, former Minister President, and Marion Caspers-Merk, parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Health, underscored the opportunities of new kinds of eHealth applications for the future of the health care sector at a talk yesterday at the opening of the ICW Briefing-Center eHealth in Berlin. Many industrial nations around the world are currently working to extend modern information technologies to the health care sector.

Before about 40 guests from the areas of politics, health care, and business, Lothar Späth spoke of his conviction that the enormous challenges in the health care system can only be overcome through more competition. To accomplish this, patients first need a better overview of the quality of medical care and treatment results. Späth sees Germany on the right track with the electronic health card: “Innovative healthcare IT applications based on the card infrastructure can improve the quality of medical care and give patients the necessary information. In order to utilize the new infrastructure as soon as possible with many voluntary value-added applications – e.g. electronic health records – and to quickly achieve noticeable improvements for doctors, patients, and health care insurers, we also need the power of private initiatives and market-oriented business structures in the health care system, e.g. via public private partnerships.”

Parliamentary state secretary Marion Caspers-Merk highlighted the electronic health card as an important location factor. Baden-Württemberg today already has 550,000 jobs in the health care sector. With the health business, the state holds a trump for its future in its hands: “Just recently, the information was published that in the last five years 100,000 new jobs had been created in the health care sector. That shows the growth potential of the health care market. The electronic health card will create additional high-quality jobs in Germany. If we implement it quickly now, it has the potential to become an export hit. In a total of eight test regions, the foundations are being laid for wide-scale deployment of the electronic health card.” Baden-Württemberg is represented by the test region Heilbronn. In the test project that will start soon, the card will be able to prove itself and achieve a sustained improvement in the quality, safety, and transparency of medical care.”

ICW Managing Board member Peter Reuschel agreed: “The success of the electronic health card will be measured above all by the improvement in treatment quality and by increased medication safety. Therefore we must not restrict ourselves to implementing just the minimum obligatory applications – such as ePrescription and contract data. It is the voluntary applications, such as the electronic mother pass and web-based disease assistants, which will enable us to reach these goals.” ICW has already been testing its health card system in conjunction with the personal health record LifeSensor in its own field test in Walldorf since June of 2005. “With our well developed technology, we are available as partners for test regions of the electronic health card”, reports Reuschel.

Starting immediately, InterComponentWare AG (ICW) is presenting the latest status of its eHealth solutions to the interested professional audience at its Berlin Briefing-Center eHealth. There visitors can already see a fully functional electronic health card system, which integrates a few physician practice management and pharmacy information systems. The system also enables the use of value-added applications, such as the personal health record LifeSensor. In addition, in the Briefing Center, networking solutions for medical practices and clinics are demonstrated, which work without replacing the existing software.


For further information please contact:
InterComponentWare Inc.
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Fon.: +1 (650) 378 - 1493
Fax: +1 (650) 378 - 1490

www.icw-global.com
www.LifeSensor.com


About InterComponentWare
InterComponentWare AG (ICW) is a leading international eHealth provider with locations in Germany, the USA, Austria, and Bulgaria. It develops and markets components for networking the different players in the health care industry, among them the hardware connector Medical NTBA and the patient-focused personal health record LifeSensor, the technology leader in this field. As part of the German government-consulting consortium bIT4health, ICW has rendered important consulting services for the introduction of the electronic health card in Germany and is additionally involved in the Austrian eCard project. With its cooperation in national and international steering and work groups for the establishment of an e-health infrastructure, ICW promotes the standardization aims in the health care industry.