Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee (TRAC)

COCIR is committed to maintaining the safety of patients, workers and the environment.  TRAC monitors policy and trade developments at Member State, EU and international level.  TRAC’s key role is to promote internationally-accepted standards.  COCIR is also actively contributing to the efforts developed by the Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) and is involved in the Asian Harmonisation Working Party (AHWP).  Global harmonisation of regulation and standards will facilitate market access while reducing the regulatory burden.    

Within TRAC there are specialised sub-committees on:

·          Environmental Policy Focus Group
·          Regulatory Affairs Focus Group
·          Standardisation Policy Focus Group
·          China Focus Group
·          Refurbishment Task Force
·          EMF Task Force

Economic Affairs Committee (EAC)

One key activity of the EAC is collecting market statistics.  Recently, a new tool has been developed by COCIR to collect statistics from the whole EU-27 to ease collection of data from its members.  In the past, the focus was on imaging and all its modalities but as healthcare IT has become increasingly important for COCIR members, a new Focus Group has been created to gather market data for healthcare IT. 

The Age Profile survey reviews the age of installed capital equipment in the EU.  The age of the installed base strongly affects the quality of medical services as well as the use of modern healthcare IT solutions in the EU Member States.  The Age Profile is regularly updated.  EAC is committed to dialogue with the EU and the Member States on the need for sustained investment in healthcare infrastructure, particularly in the new Member States.

There are specialised sub-committees with the EAC:

·          Statistics Imaging Focus Group
·          Statistics IT Focus Group
·          Sustainable Healthcare Focus Group
·          Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Task Force
·          Code of Conduct Task Force

Healthcare IT Committee (HITC)

COCIR is increasingly becoming the voice of the healthcare IT industry in Europe and in 2006 opened its membership to IT companies.  The successful implementation of healthcare IT or eHealth is seen as key to the future growth of the European Union, being identified by the European Commission as a ‘lead market’.

Currently there is no unified or integrated market for healthcare IT in Europe.  The COCIR Healthcare IT Committee focuses on the role of global standards as the basis for interoperable healthcare IT solutions for example through its continued support of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE-Europe).  

The IT Committee is also active in promoting DICOM (Digital Images and Communications in Medicine), the international standard for communicating medical images and related information. Most COCIR companies are actively participating in the working groups of DICOM.

The interest in Electronic Health Records (EHR) or Electronic Patient Records (EPR) has led to the development of many national or regional projects without coordination at the European level.  This threatens the future interoperability of this patient data and causes unnecessary obstacles for the industry.

There is one Focus Group within the Healthcare IT Committee:

·          Focus Group on Telemedicine

COCIR Secretaries’ Committee

National trade associations play an important role in COCIR and are represented through the Secretaries’ Committee.  European legislation is transposed and implemented in the Member States.  The national associations have a key responsibility to make sure that unnecessary technical barriers are not created in the transposition into national law.  COCIR is looking to extend its representation into all 27 EU Member States and beyond.  In addition, COCIR is working to strengthen its relationship with its national association members to build on the strategic and complementary role they play.