About the conference

The conference will take place at the Performing Arts Centre in Tromsø, Norway, on the 23  and 24 May in Tromsø. The conference will focus on the role of eHealth in relation to three themes:

• Facilitating mobility within and between countries - meeting the challenges of increased mobility
• Supporting more responsive health services and creating greater public awareness through better health information
• Improving access to and quality of care, patient safety, and productivity

The conference builds on two highly successful eHealth Conferences that took place in Brussels in 2003 and in Cork in 2004. It will provide an opportunity to assess progress and carry forward the political priorities set out in Brussels and Cork and review the launch, intermediate results, and upcoming year's activities of the eHealth Action Plan.

The conference will open with speeches from the Ministers' of Health from Norway and Luxembourg. Day 1 of the conference will be devoted to plenary sessions including a round table discussion between Ministers in the morning. The afternoon sessions of day 1 will focus on important issues, challenges and plans for the use and further development of ehealth - including ehealth in times of crisis.

Day 2 will be devoted to parallel sessions illustrating topics under the conferences three themes closing with a plenary session before lunch.

The conference will focus on how ehealth solutions can be a major contributor in improving health services. A variety of issues and topics will be addressed under the conference's 3 themes, among them:

• Access to information, interoperability and confidentiality
• Monitoring developments that affect health
• Using different media to provide information to the public
• eHealth applications that increase availability and quality of health services

The conference will include an exhibition consisting of examples of best practice in ehealth. Each country will be invited to select a cutting edge eHealth application that illustrates the conference's themes and demonstrates new developments in eHealth.

An early draft of the conference programme will be sent out by the end of January 2005 with the official invitation to Health Ministers and relevant Ministries. A more detailed conference programme will be sent out in March 2005. New versions of the programme will be posted on this site as soon as they are available.