Welcome message from the Minister of Health

The Ministry of Health of Republic of Slovenia has the great pleasure to host the European conference eHealth for the year 2008 which will take place during the period of the Slovenian presidency to the EU Council.

The conference is the continuation of a tradition of annual ministerial or high-level events. These conferences enable the demonstration of contemporary achievements in eHealth and the set-up of guidelines for future efforts so as to ensure the efficient use of information and telecommunication solutions in healthcare.

eHealth has enabled a tremendous development of healthcare systems over the last few years. It has already brought many opportunities to raise the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. It provides a greater efficiency of services which, in today’s era of considerable expectations on the part of every citizen, combined with limited financial resources in the system, has become among the most important goals of healthcare. With the help of information and telecommunication technologies we are introducing new ways to provide medical treatment, ease communications between citizens and healthcare providers, simplify procedures, ensure mechanisms for reducing errors, encourage individuals to manage their own health and, finally, provide data for the management both of risks and healthcare systems.

Information tools are widely used in Slovenian healthcare. In Slovenia, we are building national infrastructures and enabling the use and communication of modern technical solutions to support clinical and management processes.

With the slogan “eHealth without frontiers”, we would like to emphasise the availability of a wide range of opportunities to use modern solutions to eliminate various barriers in European healthcare. These barriers are either geographical ones, like those between healthcare providers, regions and states, or communication difficulties among the various players in healthcare systems which include users, healthcare workers, management, and regional and national authorities.

We would like the conference to offer a significant contribution to the exchange of information and experience among attendees, to enable the successful development of guidelines for further activities in the eHealth area, and to contribute also to eliminate barriers in our minds.

I wish a successful two days of cooperation, and a pleasant stay in Slovenia, to all the conference participants.