BRUSSELS – 4 May 2015 – COCIR’s Annual General Assembly 2015 recently took place in Brussels. It was articulated around a private session in the morning exclusively with all COCIR members, represented at the highest level. During this session, a new President, 
Joost Leeflang was formally appointed . The afternoon’s open session was accessible to COCIR membership and additional key stakeholders and focused on patient safety and integrated care. It was a well attended session with high-level speakers from European Commission, industry and healthcare providers, under the general theme of ‘2015 a Pivotal Year: Legal and Regulatory Framework in Motion’.
This session began with keynote speaker Professor Guy Frija from European Society of Radiology, who focused on the importance of patient safety, a critical aspect in healthcare which remains a joint responsibility for various stakeholders.
Other talks articulated comprehensive overviews of the various regulations our sector has to cope with, including environmental, medical device and data protection. For better and smarter regulations harmonisation is required and needs to be critically supported by state-of-the-art standards. As Dr Freimut Schroeder, Chair of COCIR’s Environmental, Health and Safety Committee said, “We need flexibility in regulation, as our technologies are critical in saving lives and improving quality of life”. SMEs do not have the resources of bigger industry players and are disproportionately affected by multiple regulations.
Referring to Health Technology Assessment for medical devices, the European Commission provided a comprehensive situation and added that a sustainable mechanism for joint work must be secured beyond 2019 and acknowledged HTA has a different objective compared to CE Mark. The final talk from Professor Rudi van de Velde, former CIO at UZ Brussels hospital concluded that eHealth remains a key enabler in healthcare systems, but is still fragmented. eHealth systems must be dynamic, personalised, understandable and holistic.
Nicole Denjoy COCIR Secretary General expressed the following, “Why can we check-in online when taking a plane, get money out from banks from everywhere in the world but yet healthcare can’t fully benefit from innovations and other modernised tools? Trust between the various stakeholders must be established and silos broken to fully benefit from innovative technologies as well as new financial models in healthcare.” Nicole Denjoy concluded “We will continue our efforts to articulate the importance of integrated care and workflow as we are convinced this will drive better healthcare systems, contribute in drastically reducing medical errors and moving towards cost-effective solutions.” Nicole added that the 6th annual COCIR eHealth toolkit which will be launched at the eHealth week in Riga, will also focus on integrated care and will explain the critical role of eHealth.
For more information, contact:
Nicole Denjoy
COCIR Secretary General
Tel: +32 (0)2 706 8961
denjoy@cocir.org
Kathryn Sheridan
COCIR Communications Advisor
Tel: +32 (0)496 116198 press@cocir.org