Roundtable on ICT for Health and Telemedicine held in Chisinau, Moldova

On May 20th, the session of E-health as a part of the International conference ICT+ 2009 was held in the Central Scientific Library „Andrei Lupan” of the Academy of Science of Moldova. The roundtable was chaired by the vice-Minister of Health, Oleg Lozan. The event was attended by more than 50 participants, showing a growing interest to ICT and health care issues in the Republic of Moldova.

At the one of rare, so far, public events dedicated to the important issue of eHealth, Moldovan doctors, researchers, health care managers and IT specialists presented and discussed IT-solutions for primary, emergency and hospital care management, visions and experiences in electronic health records modeling and implementation. During the session, participants were informed about existing opportunities for international cooperation in the areas of eHealth and telemedicine (ISfTeH), and available and easily accessible educational and scientific resources (Health Sciences Online and Peoples-Uni).

The organizers had to extend the session for additional two hours to accommodate the lively discussion around the issues raised in the presentations. During the discussion the concerns were raised about the sporadic origin of IT initiatives in different areas of health care. Participants outlined little evidence of cooperation between existing stakeholders and weak coordination in the area of eHealth and telemedicine in the country. All of pilots presented experienced difficulties integrating their systems with the health insurance information system. Concerns were raised about lack of interest among IT companies to cooperate with health institutions.

Other important issues included deficiencies of ICT infrastructure in health care sector, and material support of this infrastructure. Presenters emphasized the importance of the reliable ICT infrastructure availability in health care in the country, and suggested to considerably improve the certification process for IT solutions for health care.

During the roundtable many speakers expressed the interest to the idea of nationwide regulation for electronic health records, including a unique nationwide electronic health record system and creation of an entity with a capacity to develop and manage ICT resources in health care (eHealth Center).

For more information please contact Telemedicine Association of Moldova by email: telemd at idcd.org, htpp://www.telemd.blogspot.com