Ross, Peeter & Voss, Henning

Abstract:

A project, Baltic eHealth, will promote the use of eHealth in rural areas of the Baltic Sea Region by creating a large trans-national infrastructure for eHealth. The aim of the project is to illustrate that eHealth is an effective mean in increasing access to healthcare of high quality thereby empowering regional development in the Baltic Sea Region.

Within the next three years the national healthcare data networks in Denmark, Sweden and Norway will be connected with two regional networks in Estonia and Lithuania, creating the Baltic Sea Healthcare Network. After the establishment of the Baltic Sea Healthcare Network, which is the first of its kind in the world, five participating hospitals will test the infrastructure in two pilot projects within eHealth, eUltrasound and eRadiology.

By using the technological possibilities within eHealth, the aim of Baltic eHealth is to demonstrate that collaboration across boarders can be established in a constructive way for the benefit of citizens and health professionals. Citizens of the region will be able to benefit from the expertise of doctors from the other regions through the use of eHealth.

The goal of Baltic eHealth is to bring about fully developed solutions that can be directly put to use by health services throughout the Baltic Sea Region thus inspiring other local hospitals, as well as regional decision makers in the Baltic Sea Region, to establish similar collaboration.

In order to increase awareness as to how IT can improve and enhance the efficiency of healthcare, the project will also contribute to the disintegration of the legal, economical, linguistic and cultural barriers, which up until now have prevented the use and establishment of IT-supported healthcare.

It is the European Union's Baltic Sea Region Interreg III B- programme, which supports Baltic eHealth with 1.2 million Euros. Baltic eHealth began in September 2004 and is expected to end in August 2007. More information about Baltic eHealth can be found at www.baltic-ehealth.org.