Q-REC

“European Quality Labelling and Certification of Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs)”

Minutes Pre-Kick-off meeting 2005-06-15

RAMIT premises - University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium

Minutes of this meeting were drawn up by G. Ruyssinck (RAMIT).

Attendants:

Name / Country
G. De Moor / Belgium / EuroRec/RAMIT
D. Ivanov / Bulgaria / ProRec Bulgaria
G. Andonov / Bulgaria / ProRec Bulgaria
F. Mennerat / France / ProRec France
K. Dipak / U.K. / University College London
B. Blobel / Germany / ProRec Germany
R. Engelbrecht / Germany / ProRec Germany
K. Van de Vyver / Belgium / ProRec Belgium
C. Nolan / Ireland / ProRec Ireland
G. Hurl / Ireland / ProRec Ireland
K. Hickey / Ireland / ProRec Ireland
G. Freriks / Netherlands / TNO
L. Schilders / Belgium / ProRec Belgium
L. Ciglenecki / Slovenia / ProRec Slovenia

The Danish partner apologized for not attending the meeting, the Romanian partner was absent without an excuse.

Photos are taken of all partners for publication on the website.

Introduction

G. De Moor welcomes the Q-REC partners and expresses his gratitude for their contribution in the proposal.

All partners introduce themselves to the consortium. Special attention goes to the newcomers of Eastern Europe.

The two Bulgarians -delegated by the president- wish to focus on cooperation and communication in Europe. To achieve this, support from the other more experienced partners, will be necessary. Without their help, the Bulgarian contribution will not be possible.

G. De Moor illustrates that the newcomers are very motivated. Having no legacies, they can start from scratch.

Besides the absence of the Danish and Romanian partners, the subcontractors (ECOR and Empirica) are also not present.

Some practical things: Prof. De Moor has made reservation in a restaurant and invites all partners to be there. Transportation to the hotel and restaurant will be arranged.

Status of the project


G. De Moor: “A kind of agenda was distributed among the partners but this will change for various reasons”.

Until two days ago, the European Commission promised to send the official notification. This has changed now: normally next week we will receive an official response (I. Iakovidis).

Since Q-REC is a specific support project, normally SSA would go up to 900.000 to 1.000.000 Euro. Prof. De Moor however, took the risk to ask for 1.3 million and this amount has been approved.

Normally, negotiation will not be that difficult since the proposal was judged of very high quality. One condition however will be that the “best” people will stay in the project.

Despite the fact that there is still no official approval, G. De Moor wishes to start the preparation of the project. Today, the idea is to show how far we stand and how things can progress (website, project management, e-Testing tools, …).

We see that outside Europe, labelling and certification also become very important. From the Belgian side, a feasibility study is set up at Prorec.be but there is still some administrative delay. L. Schilders gives some explanation on the latest status: for some unclear reason, the official confirmation can’t be given yet. In fact, it may still take up to four months. Anyhow, Prorec Belgium will not await the official approval to start the work. Any useful experiences encountered within this feasibility study will be shared with the other partners in Q-REC/EuroRec.

In the afternoon, Prof. G. De Moor and G. Thienpont (RAMIT) will present the Eurorec website where several links to other European projects can be found:

-  RIDE: EuroRec is partner in this project. For this reason, we cannot use the same resources as in Prorec.

-  EHR: for the time being, plans for this project have been put on ice.

Eurorec can become partner in max. four different European projects.

G. De Moor: “Up till this moment, it is not entirely clear when the project will start. Most probably, the negotiations will take place in September. The start could be somewhere in October, thus the first payments will be in November-December“.

Before negotiations start, G. De Moor will contact each of the cooperating centers individually to ask the final list of names with “core partners” and “subcontractors”. To avoid unnecessary complications, it is preferable to skip the step of a “Consortium agreement”.

K. Dipak asks what the consequences will be when tasks of his organisation are done by third parties (what kind of construction, re-discussion of cost statements, …).

G. De Moor replies: “Normally, this is possible. To obtain further information on this matter, F. De Meyer (RAMIT) should be contacted”.

B. Blobel mentiones that –since we now have a very good proposal- it would be wise not to make too many (administrative) changes.

G. De Moor agrees: “the proposal has been accepted as such, i.e. with a fixed allocation of the budget to each of the partners. Therefore, there is not much freedom to make considerable shifts of tasks. It can only be reconsidered if the project would benefit of it”.

Dissemination


G. De Moor stresses the importance of dissemination within this project. It is useful to plan some conferences even before the project starts.

Three conferences will take place in Eastern Europe. The Bulgarian partners are willing to give full support for such an event.

The actual “kick-off” could take place in Ireland around 16-17 November. On these dates, the “Annual Conference of Health Science” will take place. This major conference will be opened by the Irish prime minister. Therefore, from our part, it would be good to delegate some important keynote speakers. C. Nolan confirms that the EUROREC and Q-REC members can attend this meeting for free. The day before (Nov. 15), the Q-REC kick-off meeting could be organised.

WP-Matrix


G. De Moor asks the German partners to express their opinion about the different WPs in which they are interested.

R. Engelbrecht and B. Blobel both would like to be involved in following WPs or tasks: 2.3 - 3.2 - 3.4 - 3.5 - 4.2 (since ProRec Germany already has a lot of experience on matters subject to these WPs).

G. De Moor comes back to the other WPs where the German partners were involved in.

B. Blobel: “we are not unwilling to cooperate in these tasks but they meet less our interests”.

Extra budgets are not possible.

Demo EuroRec Website

G. De Moor and G. Thienpont present the EuroRec website to the partners.

Demo TeleTendo

B. Van Grimbergen (RAMIT) shows the possibilities of an e-Testing tool “TeleTendo”. This tool has been developed within RAMIT and can as shown in the demo be integrated in a website (e.g. www.ga2len.com).

Demo HITS

G. Hurl gives a presentation on HITS (Health Informatics Training system).

The three main goals are:

-  IT basics in HealthCare

-  Information Management in HealthCare

-  IT systems in HealthCare

Demo Ga2len Admin tool

G. Thienpont (RAMIT) gives a demonstration of the “Administration tool”, used on the Ga2len website for the Ga2len Network of Excellence (NoE). The idea is to show its features for possible future use in the Q-REC project. Using this Admin tool, one can publish news, events or other content on the website in a very flexible way (with the aid of a visual interface).

Conclusion

G. De Moor emphasizes that the meeting so far has not met all his expectations due to the fact that we still wait for the notification from the EC.

G. De Moor distributes some printed e-mails with info on meetings where EuroRec is invited to participate in. There was a query (from I. Iakovidis) to join a conference (P. Waegeman) in Boston (August 2005) to present Q-REC.

R. Engelbrecht and G. De Moor will act as speaker.

C. Nolan gives his opinion on another e-mail. Apparently, there has been a query to identify the appropriate “Czar” for each EuroRec country. This way, all Health Information Technology Leaders would receive an invitation to the Hi-level summit, now known as “the Global Health Informatics Summit”. All partners agree it is too early to decide on this, we should better sent the EuroRec-Czar and then decide for each country separately. The Global Health Information Technology Summit will take place on September 19-20, 2005 in Hamamatsu City, Japan and G. De Moor will attend it.

Another mail was received form a certain Paul Sims. G. De Moor asks whether this name sound familiar to anyone. Apparently, this is not the case. G. De Moor will act as speaker in that conference in Brussels as well.

Not everyone present today will join the EuroRec board meeting tomorrow.

F. Mennerat requests a revision of financial issues (membership fees).