Riga hosted the largest eHealth conference in Europe

On 11-13 May, Riga hosted "eHealth week 2015  - the largest eHealth event in Europe and the Latvian Presidency high-level conference entitled "Me and my Health - Transcending Borders .

The three-day conference provided an opportunity to find out and analyse the main issues regarding eHealth and healthcare process improvement. The role of patient involvement and the importance of different solutions were hotly discussed. There is no doubt that eHealth and mHealth systems play a vital role in the improving of healthcare quality and patient safety.

The main task for the eHealth and mHealth solutions should be raising citizens' involvement in the maintenance of their own health. The patient's role needs to be changed from passive to active encouraging everyone to take more responsibility for their own health. The systems should be designed in a way that helps to better understand health-related issues.

The conference participants emphasised the importance of international cooperation in the introduction, development, innovation and implementation of eHealth and mHealth solutions. In order to ensure that information systems help in medical decision-making, there is a need for a united medical data coding and a united use of the international classification of diseases (ICD). It was also noted that the national healthcare systems should be evaluated as a whole to increase their effectiveness, make them available and adapt them in order to meet the needs of both patients and healthcare professionals.

The conference conclusions will be prepared on the basis of the lessons learned during this high-level conference.

The conference was organised by the Latvian Ministry of Health, the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) non-profit organisation.