We want this to be a meeting for discussing some major problems in the healthcare sector taking into account the different points of view of the actors involved. To achieve a better knowledge of such problems is a goal. Any step forward from those points towards an agreement will be a success. We count on you for all that.

1. Seminars

All seminars will take place on Thursday morning. We will have five of them:

• S1. HL7
• S2. AENOR + CEN/TC251 (AENOR is the representative of CEN in Spain)
• S3. openEHR
• S4. W3C
• S5. IHE

They will be 45 minutes long. There will be no time for questions; they will be delayed to the workshops.

2. Workshops ("talleres")

There are four of them and they will last 1 hr 45 minutes each. Every workshop will have a president and four guests. The president will open the session. He/she has 20 minutes to do that and to introduce his point of view on the subject. Then every guest will have 10 minutes to show his/her position. The remaining 45 minutes will be devoted to an open talk between them and with all attendants. Questions sent to the weblog (http://pangea.upv.es/N+ISIS05/) and not answered by anyone on the table may be asked by the organization. No filter or order other than general interest will be applied to questions. We want the weblog to be an instrument to allow for more participation of interested people.

Please find below the list of workshops with a short indication of the reasons that moved us to create them. This is only a suggestion we make. Their real content may depart from it. The positions of the people on the table (president + guests) and the questions uploaded in our weblog will condition more strongly the content of the workshops.

2.1. W1. Standards, integration and languages.

Integration projects demand an important effort of normalization. The higher the scope (or level of integration), the bigger the effort. Among the several ingredients to cook one of such projects there is a common language that allow for understanding of the different elements. Real environments of integration are multilanguage, and the will keep on being so. Any such integration project should not raise technological borders in our moving and global societies.

2.2. W2. Standard bodies.

Standards as pre-cooked solutions to common problems for consumers. The life cycle of standards. The different actors and their roles in that cycle. Succeeding standards: how they come and what are the measures of success. Disappointments between standard producers and consumers. The roles played by common users in different standard bodies. Standard bodies: the official and the others. The need for a new kind of agents to mediate between standards producers and consumers. Statements of conformity and their guarantee.

2.3. W3. Technology for integration.

Real integration environments are multilingual and this calls for automatic treatment of information. The different kinds of middleware and the need for taxonomy. XML and surrounding technologies. The role of open standards. Web services of first and second generation. Contending (want to be?) standard organizations.

2.4. W4. Services for healthcare information systems integration.

Service oriented architectures (SOA): the new paradigm. European projects for listing, defining and describing such services in healthcare environments. HANSA, DHE, WISE, PICNIC, HCTF (former CORBAmed)… just formal or academic exercises? Identifying patients within national borders and across. Healthcare record communication: approaches and implementations.

 

3. Additional or supporting documents.

It is neither feasible nor possible to say everything in a bunch of minutes. To make thing easier you can send us all that information you consider relevant to support your position or points of view or to provoke controversy. These may be reports, presentations, web surfing guides (links with some comments)... No restrictions apart from being suitable to be hold in our website and to be written on the CD/DVD we will provide with every attendant to the event.

4. Facilities.

All events will take place at a modern and comfortable hall, big enough to hold 380 people plus other 100 on the first floor. There will be one main screen and two smaller on each side. Speakers can have their speech sitting on the main table or standing up. Unless you consider this inconvenient, every session will be recorded on DVD for the purpose of making easier to prepare the summary and conclusions at the end of all events. If you were interested in the records of your talk we can give it to you.

The hall is fully equipped with loudspeakers and video/projection devices. Live translation facilities from English to Spanish and reverse will be available on all events. Speakers will have a laptop PC with the (de facto) standard software you may expect (Spanish versions).

5. Compromises.

In order to foster discussion and participation in these events we ask for two compromises to speakers:

1. To attend to all events (especially workshops).
2. Send documentation in advance (2nd of may for additional docs and 12th of may for the presentation to be hold during their speech)

6. Contacts.

Any question about logistics, travels, hotels… you can address to:

CEFIC Secretaría técnica N+ISIS’05
           C/Enrique Larreta 5, bajo izq.
           28036 MADRID
           Phone: ~34-913 889 478
           Fax: ~34-913 889 479
           E-mail: secretaria.tecnica@cefic.com