WoHIT conference recognizes European health IT innovators

The World of Health IT conference in Barcelona this week saw more than a thousand healthcare IT professionals converge to look at the state of the sector. Cybersecurity, eHealth, mHealth, integrated care, and genomics were all on the table for discussion.

Run by HIMSS, the event awarded several hospitals for their digital advancements.

São João Hospital Center in Portugal was recognised by European HIMSS-Elsevier Digital Healthcare Awards for an ICT project that could predict ICU admissions up to a week in advance.

The project, “HVITAL: Transforming Hospital Big Data into real insights that empower clinical teams to timely Act and Save Lives” is a big data analytics platform that scoured data from a number of hospital systems to identify patients at risk of infection or worsening conditions. The system claims it can predict up to 30% of ICU admissions.

Izmir Hospital in Turkey was praised for its digital maturity and EMR integration, by moving paper health records to digital solutions, and was awarded an EMRAM Stage 6 certificate.

Other hospitals that achieved EMRAM Stage 6 awards included: Fundacío Hospital Comarcal d’Inca (Mallorca, Spain), Hospital de Cascais Doutour José de Almeida (Alcabideche, Portugal), Hospital Site du Sart Tilman (Liège, Belgium), and Fondazione Poliambulanza Istituto Ospedaliero (Brescia, Italy).

Several panel discussions during the events considered new ways for healthcare IT to innovate as well as workshops on putting these ideas into practice.

Companies from the gaming industry made their case for the use of video games in healthcare. According to Anna Sort, CEO of PlayBenefit, the methodology behind games could be useful to healthcare practices. “The lessons we have learned from the video game industry can be applied in a healthcare setting, to improve processes such as adherence to treatment, user empowerment, learning and behavioural change,” she said.

Sort was speaking on a discussion panel with her brother Manel Sort, who heads up King.com, the studio behind Candy Crush Saga.

Another of the event’s highlight panels tackled the problem of gender discrimination in healthcare IT. Hosted by HIMSS Europe Women in Health IT Community, it revealed a survey that showed 57% of female healthcare IT workers in Europe have witnessed gender-based discrimination, including salary gaps and lack of promotion opportunities.

Finally, the conference also saw the launch of the inaugural of the Kate Granger Awards for Compassionate Care in Europe, which recognises healthcare professionals that see “through the eyes of a patient”.