Free movement of citizens and healthcare within the European Union

Round table on citizens' mobility called "Accessibility of high quality health care as a condition to the free movement of citizens within the European Union" was held on the 14th of June 2007 in the European Parliament under the patronage of MUDr. Milan Cabrnoch.

Among the participants were especially experts from the health care sectors, representatives of companies that produce the health care software, representatives of insurance companies and patients organizations.

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Karl A. Stroetmann from the German institute Empirica that deals with research and consultancy in the health care sector.

MUDr. Milan Cabrnoch underlined that the free movement of citizens is one of the basic ideas of the European Union, brings more job opportunities, increases solidarity and a competitive advantage. So that we can support the free movement of citizens, we have to guarantee the accessibility of high quality health care anywhere in Europe and to clear up the conditions under which the crossborder health care will be provided regarding the reimbursement of the health care and exchange of information between the health care facilities and insurance companies. It is very necessary to provide information to patients about their rights and their obligations about their disease and organization of the health care systems. Solutions in the area of eHealth are an excellent instrument for exchange of information between doctors and health care facilities, or between the health care providers and insurance companies.

Milan Cabrnoch also outlined next steps for building political pressure on putting through the instruments of eHealth. Very soon there should be established an unofficial working group of members of the European Parliament concerning eHealth that should put forward a written declaration on eHealth and deepen the cooperation with European Commission and other appropriate organizations. In October 2007 there will be a public hearing on eHealth in the European Parliament as a follow up of this round table.

Ms. Hildrun Sundseth introduced European Cancer Patient Coalition, which goal is reinforcing rights of patients all over Europe, supporting research of cancer and securing of access to therapy anywhere in Europe. She pointed out at the need of establishing financially maintainable health care systems, from which all the European citizens can receive high quality health care. Nowadays the patients while receiving crossborder healthcare have to face the insecurity of reimbursement of costs, the language barrier, lack of information and a missing legal framework. She pointed out that her organization supports the electronic transmission of health information of patient as well as its electronic identification. She also showed possibilities that the patient mobility brings especially the possibility of creation of European centres excelence, where due to the centralization of data the best high quality health care could be provided, for example, to patients with unusual diseases. At the end she called attention to the fact, that the patients expect particularly better access to information and clearer legal background.

Last presentation that was called "The EU eHealth activities in support of Patient mobility" was presented by Ilias Iakovids from the European Commission. He described challenges that the European health care systems have to face, which is the aging of population, growth of costs especially for the long-term care, increasing expectations and patient mobility. He introduced the patient oriented vision of the European Commission, that was founded in 1994 and that includes also the electronic documentation of patient and sharing of information within individual regions and states. Lately, the need of connection of regional information systems and support of innovations in the field of eHeatlh was incorporated in the concept of the European Commission. Projects of the year 2007 concentrate on electronic data standards and ePrescription. Ilias Iakovidis also pointed out at significant savings that using of eHealth instruments brings.

Following people performed in the panel discussion: Anne Sophie Parent from the European People Elder's Platform, who presented the patients perspective and criticised Commission for a very slow progress. Svetla Tsolova from the Centre of European political studies introduced eHealth conceptions in each member country and complained about difficult access to information. Ilaria Passarani from the European consumer organization pointed out at the fact there is a huge lack of information. Nicolas Luc from the Belgium office of the public health presented the Belgian experience of eHeatlh. Benny Ginman from INTEL and Jan Muehlfeit from Microsoft introduced the position of industry, appreciated the challenge made by Ilias Iakovidis concerning innovations. Tomáš Mládek, representative of IZIP introduced the situation in the Czech Republic and Frederic Destrebecq from the European medicine specialists federation informed about the doctors position. Specific situation of the Luxembourg health care was introduced by Rene Kripps from Luxembourg. Their situation is specific due to its geography where citizens are dependent on the crossborder health care.

Round table was officially closed by Milan Cabrnoch who thanked all the participants for coming and underlined that this reunion is the beginning of cooperation that will lead to the application of eHealth and especially to better quality of heath care in Europe.