European Award for NHS Direct Online

Health advice and information portal, NHS Direct Online, was chosen as one of four winners of the first eEurope Awards for e-Health at a recent ceremony in Brussels.

The awards were presented at a conference of 33 ministers responsible for ehealth in the European Union, European Economic Area and acceding countries. The winners were chosen from 180 applicants.

EU Commissioner responsible for information society issues, Erkki Liikanen, said: “I congratulate the winners and runners-up for their excellent applications. They all have great potential in meeting the win-win formula of e-health: a more productive and efficient health service and better service to patients around Europe.”

Bob Gann, Director of NHS Direct Online, said:"We were very pleased that a year of particularly rapid development and innovation for NHS Direct Online was recognised by the European Commission. The judging criteria for the e-Europe for e-Health Awards included economic benefit, access to services, quality assurance, technical standards, and European applicability. However, it was the multi-channel nature of NHS Direct, offering users a choice of ways to access the service – phone, internet, touch screen information points and printed guides – which particularly impressed the judges."

Other winners were: EVISAND, a virtual healthcare environment created by the Consejeria de Salud in Andalucia, Spain; SJUNET, a national IT infrastructure for health in Sweden entered by Carelink, Stockholm; and COHERENCE, an information system for successful hospital restructuring from the Georges Pompidou European Hospital, Paris.

NHS Direct won in the category for empowering citizens in the management of health and wellbeing. Four runners up from Denmark, Greece, France and Italy were also chosen.

The awards were presented at a high-level meeting where ministers from around Europe expressed their renewed commitment to developing national and regional e-health implementation plans and to the possibilities for co-ordinating these are European level.

A statement issued after the conference said that ministers reached agreement on a number of specific measures to improve accessibility and the interchange of appropriate health information, and to support the development of standards assuring the interoperability of the many diverse systems and services already in use.

They also reiterated their commitment to developing an information system for the early warning, detection and surveillance of health threats.