2nd Progress Meeting of TMA-Bridge

A major milestone was crossed for the TMA-Bridge project as the entire team met together recently at the headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the second Progress Meeting held 8th-9th November 2004 in Geneva.
 
Presence of Key Experts
 

The TMA-Bridge partners, ITU, WHO, and ESA, who is leading the project, were pleased to welcome a few key external experts who attended part of the discussions, contributing their ideas and further extending the network of interested parties cooperating with and supporting this challenging project.

Objectives of the Meeting

The objectives of the meeting, coincided for the most part with the key objectives of the project, how to deal with the problem of one of the main roadblocks to the realization of eHealth in Europe: Interoperability between the multitude of systems, not to mention cultures, languages, and policies. The strategic vision and mission of the TM Alliance is to see the realization of trans-national citizen-centred healthcare across the countries of Europe, enabled by the new communications technologies now available, and which are rapidly progressing in the world today.

An Holistic Approach

The broad-based representation of the partners of the Alliance allows for an holistic examination of the picture as a whole, in all its facets and across its various domains. The various dimensions considered are policy, organisational and social, and technical.
Agreement was reached on a focussed approach to the work, where specific examples would be analysed in each of the identified domains of eHealth, namely: eCare, eLearning, eSurveillance, and eAdministration.

The next planned milestone of the project will be an Interoperability workshop, which will be held at ESTEC in March 2005.