A year on from a Ministerial review that confirmed the importance of Summary Care Records in supporting urgent and emergency care, patient groups are advocating its use to improve care for the millions of people with long term conditions they represent.

HIMSS Analytics Europe has announced that the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) in Germany has achieved Stage 7 of the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM). It is the first hospital in Europe to achieve the top rating on HIMSS Analytics’ EMRAM scale, which evaluates the digititalisation level of a hospital; stage 7 is awarded for achieving a paperless medical record environment. The University Hospital of Hamburg Eppendorf will be officially recognised for their achievements at the CIO Summit in Geneva, 20-22 November 2011.

On October 1 2011, Germany will begin the country-wide distribution of its new electronic health card. Morpho (Safran group) is the first manufacturer to have received official approval for production of the card. This was confirmed by gematik (Gesellschaft für Telematikanwendungen der Gesundheitskarte) – the German association for telematics applications for the e-health card. This means that Morpho can now make the approved e-health card available to health insurers for upcoming distribution. By the end of the year, 10% of all insured persons will receive the new card.

Healthcare staff in prisons will be better placed to tackle the challenging health needs of prisoners as a result of a national prison healthcare IT system now installed in all prisons and young offender institutions across England.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has unveiled ‘Healthy People 2020’, America’s new 10-year goals and objectives for health promotion and disease prevention. The HHS has also launched “myHealthyPeople,” a new challenge for technology application developers, who are being called on to create apps for healthcare professionals to track state and community-level health data.

A new study, commissioned by Connecting for Health, and aimed at better understanding what prevents people from using information technology to help them manage their health and care, has found that many people have not heard of three major NHS health information websites.

In January Verizon will begin to issue free medical identity credentials to 2.3 million U.S. physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners. At present, there is no universal means of issuing multi-factored credentials to U.S. healthcare professionals for use in accessing any healthcare system, database or application. Verizon is taking the first to help healthcare professionals meet federal requirements of the 2009 HITECH Act, which calls for the use of strong identity credentials when accessing and sharing patient information electronically.

Saúde 24 (S24), a telephone based service offering clinical assessment, health advice and health information in Portugal, has gained the trust of the Portuguese people by significantly improving direct access to heathcare advice, and is planning further expansion.

The Choose and Book programme has announced that it has reached a key milestone of 20 million patient referrals having been booked using the system.

IBM and over 20 major worldwide public health institutions, including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the Global Pandemic Initiative, a collaborative effort to help stem the spread of infectious diseases.