Die FHS St. Gallen wird mit zwei Panels aktiv an der kommenden 23rd Bled eConference teilnehmen.

Die Konferenz findet vom 20. bis 23. Juni 2010 in Bled, Slowenien, statt.

Die Panels beschäftigen sich mit den folgenden Themen:

• Organisational challenges and new skills for ICT-supported self-care
• Ethical and legal challenges of personalised eHealth.

Die beiden Paneldiskussionen werden von Edith Maier und Ulrich Reimer vom IPM-FHS organisiert.

Hier die Abstracts zu beiden Panels:

1. Organisational challenges and new skills for ICT-supported self-care

Online interventions are expected to deliver better care for less money within patient-centred health delivery systems. It is therefore not surprising that countries are shifting in health policy towards more self-management and patient-centred care. However, self-management (SM) of disease or self-care is a skill that cannot be taken for granted but has to be learned and most people need assistance for this task. Motivating people to change their behaviour and lifestyle has emerged as THE central challenge in this respect.

On the whole, support and education for self-care is not provided by our health systems. Thanks to an increasing number of systematic reviews and evaluations of SM and health promotion programmes, guidelines about what constitutes ‘best practice’ are slowly emerging and several important patient-related factors have been identified which are associated with a positive long-term outcome in the management of illness including self-efficacy, positive coping styles, social support, and behavioural change strategies as well as exercise-related motivational factors with a special emphasis on intrinsic sources of motivation.

How can we incorporate elements in our eHealth products and services to address these factors?

• How, in particular, can we motivate users to persist with behavioural change?
• How can we increase the learning efficacy of online interventions aimed at supporting self-care and self-management of disease?

Another important factor that has emerged in the evaluation of various self-management programs such as the UK Expert Patients Programme is the organisational changes required when implementing such programs. It has shown to be essential for the different stakeholders such as national and regional health authorities, the relevant health professional associations as well as provider organisations or companies to work together and agree on common procedures and standards.

• How can we overcome the wide-spread resistance to change that can often be found in such bodies?
• How can we foster cooperation between professional bodies?

2. Ethical and legal challenges of personalised eHealth

Many eHealth experts envisage a future where personal data are combined with health information to deliver tailored health plans for individuals. A person suffering from diabetes Type 2, for instance, could receive reminders, advice on diet and exercise, prompts presented on the Web site or mobile phone – all personalised to his or her age, gender, weight, medicine intake, or other health conditions.

The guidelines drafted by the Obama administration, for example, stipulate that the electronic health records should be able to generate patient education materials that help guide care and eventually share information with personally controlled health records of the sort offered by Google Health, which allows users to build online health profiles, import medical records, search for doctors and hospitals and connect to online health services. The goal is to go beyond health care information and patient education to offer support for actions and decisions to be taken from personal health data.

This vision of future health care raises a host of issues mainly to do with how to safeguard the privacy and security of personal information, with access and control to personal data, as well as with the liability of providers of eHealth products and services.

• Is existing legislation on consumer protection adequate to protect users against damage caused by eHealth services?
• What quality criteria do health-related Web sites have to fulfil to inspire trust in prospective users?
• How can providers of eHealth services ensure the security and privacy of personal health data if they outsource (part of) the processing of these data?

These are some of the questions which will be discussed at the panel.