New solutions for personalised health management: citizens' needs, healthcare changes, and market perspectives round table debate.

The aim with the round table was to give additional inputs and views to the specific technology oriented presentations focusing on issues dealing with the need, patients' view, the use and the business opportunities relating to wearable eHealth systems for personalised health management. Wearable eHealth systems for personalised health management are targeting citizens, patients at health risks and patients enrolled in open care or home care for monitoring, treatment or follow up. The developments so far show promises for these group categories, and in addition, could support developments in health care organisations and systems. However, the ethical issues and data privacy nature have to be seriously taken into account. The market is not yet developed, and this is the situation both in Europe and in the US. To be able to give the customers solid product information a standardised test bed for new equipment and services might speed up the market development. In the round table discussion it was highlighted that one has to differ between needs and demands. Needs are related to the prevalence of the diseases, the health risks, etc. Demands are more related to market developments and customers' willingness to pay for the new products and services. Further, technical interoperability was seen as a fundamental prerequisite for market acceptance. As wearable eHealth systems for personalised health management differ completely from traditional way of deliver healthcare, new reimbursement systems have to be developed and implemented.

European Commission activities in eHealth.

Health-care is an information-intensive and knowledge-demanding sector, which is why eHealth solutions are so important in this field. The European Commission (EC) has been initiating and funding research and development activities regarding Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for health, or "eHealth", since 1988. These programmes covered priority topics like electronic health-care records, regional and national health networks, telemedicine in homecare and care-at-the-point-of-need to support continuity of care concepts, systems to support people to stay healthy, and systems and tools to support health professionals to work more efficiently and safely on patients. During the 15-year span of the programmes, the European Union (EU) has contributed about 500 million Euro to approximately 400 R&D projects, support activities, best practice and studies covering technical, clinical, ethical, legal, organisational and market issues. eHealth has shown proven benefits in application fields like improved access to care, care at the point-of-need, citizen-centred care, improved quality and cost containment. Such applications were on show at the EU High Level eHealth Conferences in Brussels, Belgium, in 2003, and in Cork, Ireland, in 2004. eHealth is now on the governmental agenda of EU Member States to be implemented on a broader scale. In line with this development, the Commission has taken a number of policy initiatives. A European Union Action Plan for a European eHealth Area was published by the Commission in April 2004 and endorsed by the EU health ministers in June 2004. This means that, for the first time, Europe has a coherent agenda for the implementation of eHealth. This report will concentrate on eHealth activities initiated by the Information Society Directorate-General of the European Commission.

Intelligent biomedical clothing for personal health and disease management: state of the art and future vision.

Telemedicine has been introduced to overcome distance in order to get prompt access to medical knowledge and appropriate health care. More recently, work in telemedicine has aimed at developing solutions to support the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and lung and heart diseases, as well as to provide support for home care services. Telemedicine is also entering the fields of health promotion/prevention disease, life style management, and well-being. The evolution and broadening of telemedicine gives birth to a nomenclature that includes "e-health," "telehealth," and "telecare." The latest developments in microsystems and nanotechnologies as well as in information processing and communication technologies allow miniaturization and non-invasive smart monitoring of physiological and physical data. Ongoing cutting-edge multidisciplinary research in textile fibers, biomedical sensors, and wireless and mobile telecommunications integrated with telemedicine, aims at developing intelligent biomedical clothing (IBC) that could pave the way to support personalized management of health and diseases at the point of need and at any time. In this study, we aim to describe the current status of multidisciplinary research and development of IBC, based on bibliographic research and reports from seminars, workshops, conferences, and working groups. A further aim is to inform the developers, the decision makers, and users in the health and healthcare sector regarding future solutions to support personalized health care and disease management. Both the textile sector and healthcare sector are looking with great interest at the innovative products and applications that could result from the integration of microsystems, nanotechnologies, biomedical sensors, textiles, and mobile telecommunications. For health monitoring, disease prevention and management, rehabilitation, and sport medicine, IBC may offer, in the mid-term future, a unique, wearable non-obtrusive telemedicine platform for individualized services that is readily accessible and of good quality.