St. Luke’s Hospital, Iowa (USA), was the first hospital which uses the online service twitter to report life about a womb operation. Twitter is an internet-based micro blog, which allows the user to inform the community with short text messages (140 characters) about ones own opinions to special themes.

Now in St. Lukes’s Hospital relatives and the internet community got the chance to be well-informed about the actual state of the surgery. The press officer from the Hospital twittered the information – like “the surgeon gets new gloves” – from a clean zone beside the operation room. Other surgeons associations – like the German society for surgeon – give cause for concern, that special communication annoys the concentration of the staff while an operation. Here our German speaking readers could get more information.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) placed the European Environment and Epidemiology Network (E3), which should concentrate on information about infectious diseases which are predicated by climate change.

Climate change will lead to fast increasing temperatures, which have as well effects on our social, economical and ecological environment. Changes in these fields lead to changes in infectious diseases. The new infrastructure E3 will focus on analysing and responding to changing communicable disease patterns caused by climate change. More Information.

WHO work out, that “good aid for health development aims to eliminate the very need for aid”. Furthermore WHO elaborate the need to get more active in the section of countries. Thus WHO will have rising costs in the next years and so a debate for financing WHO will be necessary. For more Information please read the speech from Dr. Chan (Director of WHO).

Cross-Border Medical Care is one of the health topics the Spanish EU Presidency will advance. The Spanish EU Presidency intends to work out a superior proposal, which focuses on “patient safety and quality”. More information about the Spanish health topics you can find here.

Half a year later, it is still not too late to introduce myself: I am Katharina Gaggl, health manager and EU Liaison Officer at the International Forum Gastein. If you have any requests, wishes, concerns regarding the programme of the EHFG Congress do not hesitate to contact me. My field of activity is the whole correspondence with the speakers and programme planers in reference to the EHFG Congress. In particular that means, that the EU Liaison Officer connects (with) all stakeholders and partners for the reason that the EHFG Congress will become a successful, unique event.

On the fringes of public hearings for the new Commission EHFG President Dr. Günther Leiner met with Members of the European Parliament on 12th January 2010.

At an informal lunch debate which was kindly organised and hosted by Dr. Antonyia Parvanova several members of the ENVI Committee joined us in discussing key results of EHFG 2009 and preliminary ideas for 2010. Both returning members of the Parliament and long-time supporters of EHFG as well as new MEPs concurred about the added value a multi-stakeholder platform such as EHFG can bring to policy discussions.

Considering the (low) importance health considerations sometimes have in political decision-making MEPs agreed that forces need to be joined across party lines with a view of raising the visibility and importance of health on the policy agenda. In this challenge policy-makers need to be supported by solid evidence such as provided by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies which also participated in the meeting. In particular a case for investment in health needs to be made to Ministers of Finance as the economic benefits of a healthy society are still not sufficiently acknowledged.

This meeting as well as an informal dinner with mostly Austrian MEPs provided an encouraging start for activities in 2010 and beyond as participating MEPs agreed to deepen cooperation between the European Parliament and EHFG and firmly pledged their support in promoting and facilitating future activities.

Matthias Schuppe
Secretary General

Some weeks earlier than usual EHFG left the picturesque mountains of the Gastein valley for its first Brussels appearance. (It almost didn’t happen as most of Europe came to a halt due to heavy snowfalls, but besides losing our luggage the challenges were manageable)

Against the backdrop of ongoing public hearings of Commissioner-designates the main purpose of the visit was to engage with Members of the newly elected European Parliament. In two informal meetings EHFG President Dr. Leiner met with representatives of the Liberal, Socialist, Christian Democrat and European Conservative groups (further details see: EHFG meets MEPs).

Of course we also used the trip for meetings with counterparts at the European Commission, stakeholders and supporters to received feedback and suggestions for the forthcoming European Health Forum Gastein 2010.

We will keep you posted on further details of the programme as it develops.

Matthias Schuppe
Secretary General

Now almost on time we wish you a happy new year. We hope that like us you entered healthily into the year 2010.

2009 started with a gloomy outlook against the background of the developing financial crisis. Many of you joined us in discussing this issue at the 12th European Health Forum Gastein in October and in the Austrian Parliament in November 2009. As it seems stimulus packages across Europe may have succeeded in preventing many potentially negative economic consequences of the crisis. However as unemployment rates in some countries are still on the raise it’s no time to be complacent.

But we also identified additional tasks in our challenge to improve our function as a platform for discussion for the various stakeholders in the field of public health and health care. Some of this includes invigorating some existing ideas such as the re-launch of this blog as well as increasing cooperation with member state parliaments and of course the newly elected European Parliament and the incoming Commission.

Now sadly this will not leave much time for skiing, particularly when looking at lots of fresh snow outside the office. But I’m sure that these additional tasks will be very exciting and will also help to improve the reach and quality of our work in 2010. So make sure you continue to monitor our website and blog to get an impression of the developing activities and the programme of EHFG 2010.

Best wishes

Matthias Schuppe
Secretary General

Novartis published a study, which examines “the role of funding and policies on innovation in cancer drug development” in Europe and USA. The study figures out some absorbing results for the area of policy implications, e.g. “European funding appears to be fragmented concurrently with duplication and inadequacies”. Get the concept of the study and the hole results here.