23 and 27 March 2009: ELAN project workshops

The ELAN (Electronic learning and assistance network) project is an eLearning marketplace, connecting different e-learning concepts, users and suppliers in innovative ways on www.columbus-portal.eu. To test the market, the consortium undertook ‘pilot runs’, with nearly 1,000 active users from Germany, Poland and the UK, using courses as diverse as international business culture, bead working, computing, and history. In the UK for example, the project works closely with the Beadworkers Guild. In Germany, international students are using the course “Absolutely Intercultural”, while the most popular courses on the portal seem to be the general language courses for English, Spanish and French. In Poland, a large group of students have already used the Columbus Portal and members of the Nanoscience Foundation also increase their knowledge online, using one of the hobby courses on nanotechnology. The project has been presented at various international events. A further hands-on workshop for journalists, learners and course creators will take place at the University of Duisburg-Essen, on 23 March. Furthermore, to demonstrate the results of the pilots, a project meeting is organised on 27 March in Warsaw, Poland. More via the video at http://elan.iliasnet.de/portal/de/84.html or email to info@columbus-portal.eu.

16-17/03/2009: Procure project events, Brussels, Belgium

As the project reaches its final stages, Procure is organising a set of three events on 16 and 17 March 2009 in Brussels. A presentation will be given to SMEs in the morning of 16 March, while the afternoon session will demonstrate the service to European regions. The Procure final conference - with a complete overview of core topics for a modern, border-less public procurement service - is scheduled to take place on 17 March at the premises of the Committee of the Regions in Brussels. Procure proved the benefits of e-procurement to public administrations and SMEs in five regions.

More on http://www.epractice.eu/en/workshops/procure.

More info and a 3d animation on Procure at www.eten-procure.com.

6-10/03/2009: R-Bay project at the European Congress of Radiology, Vienna

R-Bay aims at establishing an online marketplace within the field of radiology. The R-Bay platform uses a streaming technology that allows high-quality images to be transmitted almost irrespective of bandwidth. R-Bay was presented at the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna (6-10 March) in EXPO B. More about the project can be read in a recently published article on HealthTech Wire here. More

19/02/2009: NETC@RDS for eEHIC at the Ministerial eHealth Conference

The NETC@RDS project was presented at the Ministerial Conference “eHealth for Individuals, Society and Economy" (18 – 20 February 2009, Prague). The presentation took place on 19 February focusing on the State of the Art of ICT for cross-border healthcare: patient identification, authentification, privacy and security. More on the conference at http://www.ehealth2009.cz 

04/02/2009: European services standard for cross-border healthcare provision agree

Two eTEN projects developing IT-based services for cross-border healthcare provision, TEN4Health and NetC@rds, have agreed on a common European web service specification supporting standardised messaging to link hospitals and other health care providers with health insurance organisations and with national healthcare IT infrastructure. The development of the services and this agreement are seen as a major step towards full interoperability in web-services provision throughout European health care. The new services help ensure that any European citizen requiring healthcare in another European country can be served easily, that health care providers can reliably determine that a patient is covered by health insurance and rapidly receive reimbursement.

NETC@RDS is deploying an online service for the electronic European Health Insurance Card (eEHIC). The current project phase will enable health care access for European citizens who provide evidence of entitlement in any of the service sites across the 15 European countries. More on http://www.netcards.eu/.

The TEN4Health service package ensures access of citizens to healthcare in participating Member States' hospitals, based on a secure web service and its integration into developing European eHealth infrastructure networks. More on www.ten4health.eu.

February 2009: EU-Latitude pilots successfully completed

The EU-Latitude project successfully completed pilot testing of advanced services offered to EU tourist authorities by cooperation between EU publishers. The goal was to increase the flow of tourists interested in local culture and events into European territories. A network of distinguished publishers including Gallimard, France, El Pais / Prisacom, Spain and Touring Editore / Touring Club Italiano, Italy, collaborated in an 18 month trial led by specialist consultants empirica, Bonn. The region of Piedmont and tourist authorities in Spain, France, Italy and Bulgaria directed the development of the new services by software provider Sedona, Paris. Services, incorporating user and edited contributions (Web 3.0), are now publicly accessible and can be viewed at http://www.discover-eu.com. More: http://www.eu-latitude.eu

4-5/12/2008: Health Optimum ID at the Personal Health Systems meeting

During the cluster meeting of FP6, FP7 and eTEN projects related to “Personal Health Systems (PHS)”– held in Brussels on 4-5 December 2008 -, the Health Optimum Initial Deployment phase has been presented. The meeting included projects from the domains of ICT for Health, Micro-nano Systems, ICT for Ageing and eTEN. This allowed a view on possibilities arising from new technologies, on ICT platforms for broader solutions applicable to elderly, like the integration of health and social care systems, as well as on experiences from pilots. The Health Optimum ID project represented a good practice of the methodology to deploy telemedicine services. Health Optimum provides services that can aid regions reach the goal of a quality healthcare and cost reduction whilst providing increased convenience to patients. More: www.healthoptimum.info

1-3/04/2009: MEDeTEL, Luxembourg

MEDeTEL, the International eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT forum is taking place on 1-3 April 2009 in Luxembourg. More at: www.medetel.lu

The NETC@RDS Mid-Term workshop will be organised in the frame of MEDeTEL (scheduled for 2 April, 14:00 – 17:30), presenting the project achievements reached so far and generating a wide discussion on policy and legal related aspects, potential market dimension and commercial features of the service as well as the effectiveness of the proposed ICT solution in view of the interoperability of the eEHIC as forthcoming challenge for borderless care in Europe. The NETC@RDS application and services will be demonstrated during the workshop through a dedicated booth. More on www.netcards.eu. TEN4Health is also organising a workshop at the conference (taking place on 2 April, 9:30 – 13:00), entitled "Citizens Services for Borderless Healthcare in the European Union: Practical Solutions", featuring examples coming from Austria, Netherlands and the Czech Republic More at www.ten4health.eu

7/04/2009: eID and Public Registers Conference Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

As a part of the Czech EU presidency, the Czech Ministry of Interior will organize a high-level conference on electronic identity and public registers in Hradec Králové on 7 April 2009. The conference will be based on invitation only. The "eID and Public register" conference will be arranged in relation to the 12th annual ISSS conference (Internet in Public Administration/Local and Regional Information Society).

More: http://www.eu2009.cz/event/1/443/