Tech Talks Central

An aspect we usually ignore, when talking about healthcare for the most serious and sometimes terminal illnesses, is that of the patient. Kathi Apostolidis, a fiery blogger on healthcare and president of ECPC, talks about the ethical and practical issues arising, as well as the measures to be taken in national and international level. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

Yannis Rizopoulos talks with the co-founder of Micrel Medical Devices, Alexander Tsoukalis, about medical pumps, the story and the efforts behind it, about innovation and prospects for the future. He talks about his vision vs. reality and offers some advice for start-upers.

Nafsika Zevgoli, head of Corporate Responsibility at Vodafone Greece, explains the reasons that the company’s Telemedicine Program has been an overwhelming success story during the last nine years, covering with basic medical examinations more than 500.000 people living in remote mountainous areas or islands in Greece. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

Michael Strubin from Continua, a well known Health Alliance umbrella with more than 200 member companies, talks about the urgent need for interoperability, regarding the numerous devices used today in Healthcare, and he ensures us that more and more people want to be involved in their own wellness. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

An experienced Strategic Technology Manager in eHealth issues, Bridget Moorman, talks about protocols and standards; safety in home health monitoring; privacy and security; interface problems and the many challenges we face today or will soon face in these fields in our everyday lives. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

The general secretary of HL7 Foundation, Catherine Chronaki, explains what is the Trillium Bridge Project and why it is so important for travellers and especially mobile workers. She confirms that the dialog between EU and US on interoperability of patient summaries is gaining momentum, but says that we’ll need more of it. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

The Greek three-year-old project on e-prescription has been characterized as a best practice on a European level, as it combines innovation with results. Professor George Pagkalos, president of IDIKA (e-Government Centre for Social Security), the main implementer of the project, explains the problems they faced, the solutions they found and the steps still needed to reach their next targets. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

USEFIL, an EU ICT FP7 project with significant stakeholders from different EU countries, proposes solutions for elder people in the context of a “smart home”; where various high-tech gadgets and applications help them lead a much easier and respectable life. Homer Papadopoulos from Demokritos NCSR and Detlef Ruschin from Fraunhofer give us the inside story. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

We talk with Health Team leader for the Greek ICT company Singular Logic, Petros Papachristou, about the three big contemporary issues (digital – filmless – cloud) in the Health sector and the export of Greek know-how in neighbouring countries. We also take a look on the “burning” issue of what’s next for patients’ records. Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

Coming from Aveiro, Portugal, Isabel Alexandra Cruz – CEO of iUZ, a company that specializes on eHealth issues- talks about their innovative solutions regarding Electronic Data Capture and eHealth interoperability, as well as the overall lifecycle of information systems delivery. Listen in to her novel proposal she makes on dental care... Interviewed by TTC’s Yannis Rizopoulos.

We talked with Karina Marcus, Director at Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme, about the ageing population of continents with developed economies like US & Europe and the market gap for services and products for the 60+ age group. We then discussed about AAL, an EC co-funded programme which is aiming to fill this gap by supporting solutions tailored for the elderly, both by improving the quality of their life and by providing ways to be more productive. Interviewed by TTC’s George Voulgaris.

Yiannis Soldatos, Advisor in Business Development of the BIONIAN cluster and professor at Athens Information Technology, and Alexandros Antoniadis, Head of Marketing at BIONIAN cluster, gave us an overview of the purpose, activities and vision of the new Health Sciences Cluster. Beyond the all-round support to businesses, universities, hospitals, research institutes and the academia, we talk about the cluster's innovation activities which are focusing on Clinical Investigation (CI), a high-growth area for the region, and Environmental Health Sciences (EHS). Interviewed by TTC’s George Voulgaris.

Bleddyn Rees, Non-Executive Director of the European Connected Health Alliance, and a Commercial lawyer with huge experience, talks about the practical aspects and benefits of the Digital Personal Health Record (PHR) along with some of the key bottlenecks in the quest to achieve wide adoption in healthcare. Our conversation then moves beyond PHR and into the technology and business model disruptions currently happening in healthcare. At the last part of the discussion, we talk about Social Impact bonds, a new alternative for financing projects with quantifiable social impact and the (fallacies in) public perception on privacy in health data. Interviewed by TTC’s George Voulgaris.

Charles Parisot is in charge of standardization and IT architecture coordinating overall GE Healthcare products. In this interview Charles talks about interoperability in eHealth. Charles gives some insights on why system interoperability, both at commercial and country level, actual does matter for the average person/patient/tax-payer. He then expands on the current EC-backed efforts driving interoperability across Europe and beyond, and on using the "hackathon" model to boost participation and creativity in specific activities. In the last part of our discussion, Charles gives a healthcare-expert perspective on the wave of lifestyle/wellness devices and apps that are getting closer to an overlap with services provided by the traditional healthcare sector. Interviewed by TTC’s George Voulgaris.

Dr Robert A. Stegwee, a Principal Consultant for IT in Healthcare with Capgemini Consulting, explains what we mean by digital Personal Health Record (PHR) and how it extends far beyond hospitals and traditional healthcare services. We also talk about the current status of PHR implementations, adoption, and use cases such as telemedicine; highlighting the central and critical role of PHR in the evolution and realization of eHealth in general. Interviewed by TTC’s George Voulgaris

Tina Miteko interviews Fredrik Linden, project coordinator of epSOS on the details behind this important European eHealth project and its attempt to offer cross-border care for European citizens. Fredrik talks about the infrastructure that enables secure access to patient summaries and health records from different European systems and shares his personal experience testing the effectiveness of the ePrescription process while traveling from one European country to another.

Tina Miteko interviews Marc Lange, Secretary General of the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) about the purpose that EHTEL serves; key activities and European projects that the association is supporting such as United4Health; and his thoughts on how to make the healthcare system more sustainable.

Panos Stafylas, MD, Medical Coordinator of European Projects on combining his cardiology background with technology to drive change both in Greece and across Europe. He shares some of the results of a project in Municipality of Trikala in Greece which helped reduce hospitalization rates by 30% in patients with heart failure, and also talks about large-scale European pilot projects which are aiming to create cost efficiency, improve quality care for patients with diabetes, COPD, and cardiovascular diseases. Interviewed by TTC’s Tina Miteko.

Tina Miteko talks with Matic Meglic, Head of Healthcare Informatics Center at the National Institute of Public Health in Slovenia about his experience in eHealth and public health; policy actions that impact digital health; his involvement on European initiatives such as epSOS and PARENT; and the role that gamification and social media play in managing chronic care and promoting wellness.

Marcello Melgara, responsible for the epSOS project in Lombardy region in Italy talks about the challenges in healthcare, the objectives and initial results of epSOS. He shares his insights on other European projects such as the Trillium Bridge project, which is aiming to create an exchange of clinical data and patient summaries between the European Union and the United States to benefit the citizens of both regions. Interviewed by TTC’s Tina Miteko.