ICT for quality and safety of care: beyond interoperability

Risk Management in healthcare is a particularly challenging task. From a health system perspective a systemic and person centered approach is needed. From an ICT perspective, continuity of care and sharing information for clinical purposes, research and care improvement can be supported though interoperable systems and services and concurrent ability of proper interpretation of this knowledge by different users. Research provides solutions to specific patient safety challenges. Supporting the dynamics of change will furthermore necessitate strategies to shorten the innovation cycle from research to implementation, deployment, adoption and routine use. Transferring research results to deployable solutions requires in addition a high degree of co-ordination at EU level, with strong links to the national competent organisations and stakeholder communities. The breadth and complexity of the issues that need to be addressed require that an appropriate, EU Collaborative Governance is set up.