Well, final thoughts are now emerging as I sit in Detroit airport waiting to complete the last leg of the return home to Buffalo, NY, USA. Long day (aren’t all trans-oceanic ones?). Anyway, wanted to close out the blog for this conference.

First, the software used for this blog is not quite smooth - spaces between paragraphs are not ’staying’ when the entry is published. My apology. Secondly, we did not complete the last day of the conference. Myself and colleagues decided to be tourists but our plans for the day did not turn out as anticipated. We never did make Paris as there was not return TGV train for Friday. We could get to Paris but would have had to stay overnight and return Saturday morning. Instead we traveled to Vianden and tripped lightly up a long inclined road to walk through. A really cool site with great history and spectacular views! Nice quaint town to stroll through - no crowds, either, as it was off-season.

OK, enough of the touristy sidebar. On to final thoughts of the conference. First, the conference was an exceptional demonstration of the utility and need for telehealth and all of its associated sub-specialties on patient care around the world. There was a great diversity of attendees, too, with what I recall as over 50 countries represented. The conference was well run, too, with minimal technical difficulties noted (at least to me). Given the nature of the attendees the need for net access was a given. The wireless was of great quality compared to some conferences I have recently attended (no names, please). Public transportation was excellent to get around, too.

A few items offered as areas of improvement include the ‘group’ plenary session. This was a session on the opening day, which ran for 2 hours during which 8 keynote speakers each had 15 minutes (that was the plan). It was a tough sell and perchance consideration might be to space out these speakers so attendees can relish a ‘richer’ experience. A second item has to do with the environment. The 2 conference rooms (2 & 3) opened onto the exhibition / snack area. The room plan included no doors with a sound wall to deflect the incoming ambient noise. However, this did not happen. For the sessions I participated and or moderated the noise was more than moderately distracting; with no door to close the only alternative was to increase the volume of the speakers.

In spite of the devalue of the dollar I maintain this conference, as a first timer, was worth the investment. There is a concerted effort and desire by the conference administrators to encourage and promote the role of nurses in telehealth / telemedicine. The plan, as I understand, is for more nursing presentations at the next conference, April 1 - 3, 2009, once again in Luxembourg! See you then!

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This is an attempt at ‘post-session’ blogging and a bit more, my own session. I moderated and presented the session titled “Nursing Informatics: Past, Present and Future”. This is the first session ever at Med-E-Tel about nurses and for nurses. Congratulations for getting this session in place go to Frank Lievens, Secretary, International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (and his vision / support for nurses in this specialty) as well as Mr. Bob Pyke (with long-standing history in telemedicine.

In general the session went well with a few glitches. One participant did not show so this helped with the time constraints of 15 minutes per session. In general it was the US and Brazil, the countries of presentation. About 10-15 persons were in attendance at any point in time. Topics ranged from a presentation regarding nurse roles in US-based company about telephone interaction with patients to a schematic representation of NI over time to the TIGER Initiative to a look towards the future of NI. The Brazilian presentation was very interesting in that it was a very small study comparing traditional telephone support of cancer patients versus using off-the-shelf hardware for video-conferencing with these same patients. The primary barrier to use, it turns out, is infrastructure. It seems broadband, a fair amount of the time in Brazil, is not really broadband. This several hampers transmission for video-conferencing and turned the nurses ‘off’ regarding use. If the connectivity had been better the nurses really wanted to use the video-conferencing because they perceived it provided them with additional ability to assess and work with these patients. Very interesting stuff with potential for impacting use of technology in developing countries and beyond.

The second session in this room was titled “Telenursing Implementation Strategies and Success Factors”. Speakers included I.A.C Mendes from Brazil, Bob Pyke (USA), Diane Castelli of AMD Global Telemedicine (USA) and Loretta Schlachta-Fairchild (USA). Mendes described telenursing skills in an undergraduate nursing program in Brazil. Bob Pyke reviewed various items relevant to telehealth from WHO (priorities, objectives and so forth); Diane C. reviewed a number to tips r/t successful telenursing programs, and Loretta reviewed the results of the survey of telenurses and implications of these findings. There were about the same number of attendees (12 - 15) as with the first session.

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Thoughts and notes regarding this session may be slightly asynchronous in nature. My battery is well below 50% so we’ll see how long I can go before shut down. It is also clear this session will not complete by its expected time.

There are a host of folks scheduled for this plenary session, which runs from 11am thru 1pm. Each person is allotted approximately 15 minutes. Doing the math there are 10 persons presenting during this time. Opening speaker is Dr. Yunkap Kwankam, eHealth Coordinator, Dept. of Knowledge Mgt & Sharing, WHO. Excellent speaker who covered few topics including AHI (African Health Infoway). He acknowledged this is modeled closely on the Canadian Infoway model. Focus of this project is sharing information and data across countries in Africa. Given the US situation why is not the US working or collaborating with the WHO’s efforts? There may be cooperation but I am unaware and apologize if in fact this is the case.

Nick Fahy is 2nd speaker. Talking only; no presentation. Fahy is the Head of Unit, Health Information Unit, DG Health and Consumer Protection, EC, Luxembourg. Cross border of ‘health care’ is a big concern of Fahy’s unit. Nick says 2017 there is no more growth because of less population; after this point less will be working to pay for the majority of health recipients.

Mr. David Whitlinger, Continua Health Alliance.
Continua is international organization, collaborative in nature and non-profit, with interest in telemedicine. Multiple vendors and other ‘entities’ comprise the alliance. The key for this group is interoperability and how this influences growth and innovation. He talked about personal telehealth; has 3 experiences of (1) health & wellness (the “worried well” are part of this), (2) disease management and (3) aging independently. The alliance is trying to create standards to allow for off-the-shelf applications or out of box development with limited issues related to ’setting up and running’. 22 companies comprised alliance in ‘06; now up to 150 companies in ‘08. Interestingly the members embrace free source code but only members, no ‘non-members’ can access this code.

Mr. Michael Palmer, Project officer, ICT for Health Unit, Belgium
This gentlemen tried to make up for lost time. Unfortunately a fair amount of his talk (primarily background) had been alluded to by the previous speakers. Also unfortunately he read from the slides, a style of some difficulty for the attendees.

Bill Crounse, MD, Senior Director, Worldwide Health, Microsoft Corp., USA
Excellent presenter; had past experience from broadcasting (TV) to draw on; good speaking voice, too. Almost charismatic in presentation. He has his own blog but not sure of title or URL. I’m sure one can locate it searching on his name, though. His (aka Microsoft’s) view of future telemedicine involves heavy cell/smart phone use as far as personal health records. Also briefly discussed was something titled “NxOpinion” (a decision-support company) working with MS for machine-aided diagnosis for 3rd world health providers. He then delved into the future (7 - 12 years hence) with a short video clip depicting this description. Very slick and nicely done. Clip depicted a lot of surface computing interfacing as well as very slick personal tablet for providers and almost instantaneous communication/connectivity. A lot of the technology is similar to their recently acquired multi-digit picture manipulation as well as Apple’s current iPhone presentation.

Jospeh Kvedar, MD, Director, Ctr for Connected Health, Partners, USA
Unfortunately I missed this gentleman’s presentation due to not being present.

Lloretta Schlachta-Fairchild, RN, PhD, FACHE, President & CEO, iTelehealth, USA
I caught the end of Dr. Schlachta-Fairchild’s presentation and wish I had caught all of it. The gist, to me that is, was the importane of nursing to telehealth and the increased activity, and soon to be created, special interest group within ISiTeH (I think this is the organization).

Prof. Harald Korb, MD, Medical Director, Telemedical Svc Ctr of Vitaphone, Germany
I caught some of Dr. Korb’s presentation, too, but only the end and not enough to write about.

Lunch was then held afterwards as part of the attendees’ registration package. During lunch networking among individuals and with vendors was encouraged and well received.

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Opening session is under way. Free WiFi at Luxexpo is a very, very nice touch. So far stability of connection is very nice, too. This opening session is listed as 1/2 hour in length and it appears to be closely following these time constraints in spite of about a 5 minute delay. Opening speakers include Alain Georges, Chairman, Luxexpo; Mars diBartolomeo, Minister of Health & Social Security, Luxembourg; Michael Nerlich, President, International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth; Yunkap Kwankam, eHealth Coordinator, WHO; and, Giuseppe Tritto, President, World Academy of Biomedical technologies (ICET/UNESCO). Also speaking is Nick Fahy, who is speaking later this morning. The conference official language is English, which makes blogging from me much easier. This is the 6th conference of Med-e-Tel.

Approximately 200 attendees at this opening session. Each speaker offers thanks to various persons and organizations. Mars outlines perspectives regarding eHealth both social and financial (added value). Nick Fahy, also, raised issue of solidarity of Europe regarding health care and society; eHealth is one of the key technologies for achieving this goal. Pre-recorded welcome (video clip) from Michael Nerlich as he will arrive tomorrow. Gisueppe Tritto closes the opening remarks. Yunkap Kwankam is unable to contribute at this point because he is on his way. Frank L. closes out the session by outlining various points and emphasis at this conference (students, 3rd World/country representation, and the idea of eHealth for the common good). A short tribute to Dr. Jean-Claude Healy who recently passed away on March 21st of this year. He was instrumental in having an eHealth bill passing in the EU.

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Well, here I am, in Luxembourg. A first timer at the conference as well as visiting the country. The conference (http://www.medetel.lu) is officially titled ” The International Educational and Networking Forum for eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT”. The opening page provides a lengthy description of what this organization is about. Take a moment to review as it covers a lot of ground.

Myself and colleagues (Kay Sackett, Rosemary Pope) will rest and recharge this evening to be ready for our contributions to this conference tomorrow afternoon. The gentleman responsible for our attendance, Mr. Bob Pyke, is also here and already hard at work.

More to follow - Scott

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