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Erik Gerritsen, vice minister of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in the Netherlands, had a simple message for delegates on the second day of the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European conference in Helsinki this evening: there is an urgent need to address the “global interoperability crisis” facing healthcare. Governments need to step up, Gerritsen said, and move away from the approach adopted in the past, where the health IT industry was left alone to try and "fix" the interoperability challenge. “What I see is a global market failure in achieving meaningful interoperability. "What I see now is that, with all our technological advancements, people are still dying because we are not able to get the right electronic information in the right place at the right time," he said. "And I see hospitals being forced to select a specific EHR system because their data is locked into their vendor’s closed ecosystem. "I see nurses and doctors burning out and leaving healthcare behind because the technology doesn’t work for, but against them," he added. "I see desperate patients starting lawsuits to be able to get their own medical data because healthcare organisations are not willing or not able to provide their data to them." His comments echoed the remarks of patient advocates at the event, as well as governmental figures from other European countries calling on all stakeholders to work together and ensure healthcare does not, as Gerritsen put it, continue to miss out on the “digital revolution”, with fax machines and paper still common in many organisations - and "extinct everywhere but healthcare".  Empowered citizens and healthcare professionals The problem, however, is not the lack of having a vision in place or the lack of usable technology; it's implementing and scaling good solutions, Gerritsen said. The vice minister emphasised that health innovation needed to be "accelerated" to ensure that the right care is delivered at the right time. For this to happen, there is a need for empowered citizens, with access to the tools needed to be in control of their own health, and empowered healthcare professionals.  The vice minister acknowledged, however, that government is often seen as “the opposite of inspiration, slowing down innovation with needless red tape and bureauracy”. But he added: "As governments, we have a responsibility to serve the interests of all our citizens, to ensure that everyone is able to participate in today’s society, no matter their background. “People don’t do whatever you say, but they will follow what they see you do." Norway health tech CEO receives achievement award The evening keynote also saw Kathrine Myhre, chief executive of Norway Health Tech, receive the HIMSS Future 50 European Achievement Award. Myhre is the founder of Norway Health Tech, previously known as the Oslo Medtech Cluster, which brings together over 200 members from the digital health industry, providers, local authorities, R&D organisations and investors. “To ensure the growth of digital health into its full potential, we need leaders who can constantly push to improve the quality in treatment and care by developing and industrialising world-class health solutions through members and ecosystems,” said Sean Roberts, HIMSS EMEA vice president. “Kathrine Myhre is one such thought leader and a role model.” HIMSS launches nursing informatics community HIMSS, owner of Healthcare IT News, also launched today its European Nursing Informatics Community, in collaboration with the Finnish Nurses Association, the International Council of Nurses and the European Health Management Association. "Throughout our ongoing engagement with healthcare providers and the broader European community membership, we have recognised that nurses are the closest to the gaps in care representing the human link between technology and patients," said Angela Velkova, HIMSS director of communities and strategic relations. "Therefore, digitally empowered nurses will directly translate in improved delivery of care to the benefit of citizens and entire communities."

The firm says hospitals and health systems should be preparing themselves to take advantage of distributed ledger technology, AI, augmented reality and quantum computing.

Many illnesses are easy to treat if caught in time. New EHR studies show how optimizing data can spot problems clinicians might overlook.

Use of an inhaler-connected sensor helped push the average number of COPD-related hospital trips down to an average of 2.2, compared to the year prior to study enrollment when the average was 3.4 trips to the hospital.

They have created a series of video education and engagement tools to assist healthcare staff and clinicians dealing with opioid addiction.

A quick look at the FinnGen project.

Digitisation can alleviate the challenges healthcare is facing. But this won’t happen automatically. Citizens and patients have to take the lead – as data owners and co-creators.

The Northern Territory (NT) Department of Health in Australia will soon become the first pathology provider to link the online tests results it is sharing via My Health Record (MHR) with Lab Tests Online, a not-for-profit website funded by the Australian Government under the Quality Use of Pathology Program (QUPP). MHR is an online, electronic summary of one’s key health information. The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) announced in February this year that 9 out of 10 Australians have a MHR following the conclusion of the opt-out period.  Why it matters Pathology providers across Australia have started uploading reports (such as blood test results) to the online record. The aim is that by having direct access to their results, anyone with an MHR can keep track of the tests they have had, the dates when they had them and be able to monitor results over time. The ADHA has recognised that as people have direct access to their test results – many of them for the first time – they need help to understand what the results mean. It has turned to Lab Tests Online to deliver this service. All those in the Northern Territory receiving their results report on their MHR will now have a direct link to the opening page of the Lab Tests Online website. The front page of the website is being redesigned to accommodate this new audience. As part of the redesign, a predictive search function and quick links will be included to the most commonly searched tests to make navigation easier. Lab Tests Online is working with a number of pathology providers to assist them in following the NT Health initiative and embed links in their reports. What’s the trend According to Lab Tests Online, there is a growing public appetite for information about pathology tests. Traffic to their website has increased at more than 50 per cent annually in recent years and reached 2.6 million-page views in 2018.

The George Institute for Global Health and Woolcock Institute of Medical Research study shows half of adults and one third of children with asthma were either skipping or decreasing dosages to make medicines last longer.

The National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), the national specialty centre for the management and care of neurological diseases in Singapore and Iota Medtech, a local medtech company specialising in AI and surgical robotics, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop a system to sort brain scans of head injury patients in order of urgency. What’s it about Currently, there is a significant waiting time for head injury patients requiring urgent treatment, especially when scans were received after radiologists' working hours. The 70 to 100 brain scans received daily are interpreted by radiologists in chronological order. The development of the priority sorting system will help ensure that patients requiring immediate medical attention receive the care they need. Radiologists will be able to interpret brain scans faster and their work will be more efficient. NNI will develop the algorithm to sort brain scans using a “triage system”, with each scan labelled red, amber or green according to the urgency of medical attention. The system will also be tested in a clinical setting, with its accuracy compared against that of radiologists in NNI. Before being implemented in hospitals, it will have to go through regulatory approval processes by the Health Sciences Authority, the national regulator for health products, which will take some time. In the future, the system developed by NNI and Iota Medtech can be modified to treat other common conditions such as stroke and glioma (a type of brain tumour).  On the record “Head injury was chosen as the initial focus of the system in accordance with current patient demands”, said Mr Benjamin Hong, CEO of Iota Medtech in a statement. Associate Professor Ng Wai Hoe, medical director of NNI said, “Iota Medtech's algorithm has already passed laboratory tests for accuracy and NNI will be providing data of brain scans to continually increase the accuracy of the system. The sharing of the data will be in accordance with guidelines in the Personal Data Protection Act.”