eHealth Europa

The Spanish region of Extramadura has reported that trials of e-prescription sharing across Europe are going well, despite difficulties caused by Coronavirus. The intention of the interoperability trials is to allow people living in rural border areas in Europe, as well as visitors and tourists, to obtain medicines from pharmacies in another country.

The French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has extended personal data capture and processing for Covid contact tracing, test results, and individuals’ vaccination status. The new decree widens the scope under which Covid-related personal data can be collected, expands the amount of data that can be collected, allows private contractors to process personal data, and limits the right of individuals to oppose collection and processing of personal data.

Researchers at the universities of Heidelberg in Germany, and Zurich in Switzerland have developed an AI model to detect human motor impairments and determine underlying diseases. The new software is also a test for how effective unsupervised AI behaviour analysis can be in discovering and determining complex disease states. Conventional supervised instrumented movement analysis is time-consuming, potentially subjective, and cost-intensive. It requires prior knowledge of behaviours of interest, and typically a large amount of video frame annotation. There is scope for human annotator bias, with different annotators focusing on different behaviours, while ignoring or minimising others. The researchers have developed uBAM ("unsupervised Behaviour Analysis and Magnification using Deep Learning"). This is a fully automatic, unsupervised diagnostic support system for behaviour analysis. The new system can extract and classify behaviour automatically, with the ability to compar

The roll out of Germany's electronic patient record (EPR) programme began on January 1st. However implementation of the programme now looks likely to be delayed by the ongoing coronavirus lockdown. Germany's EPR programme is behind schedule as it is. Field tests have only just started in some states. The majority of GPs, family doctors and specialists cannot make entries into the EPR system. It is likely to be July before Germany has national EPR coverage. However the coronavirus situation has added an additional barrier to the EPR roll out. German lawmakers, and the public, have demanded high security standards for the EPR. There have been significant concerns over privacy and the possibility of data loss. As a result of these concerns, the identity of an individual has to be verified in person at a local branch office of one of the health insurance funds before an EPR for that individual can be activated. Due to the coronavirus lockdown, branch offices are closed. The healt