EFMI and EUSEM cooperate to advance the digital transformation of Emergency Departments

EUSEM (European Society of Emergency Medicine) and EFMI (European Federation Medical Informatics), signed an agreement to collaborate on research and education and advance the digital transformation of emergency departments throughout Europe.

EUSEM and EFMI plan to create recommendations and education tools for the application of information technologies in Emergency Medicine Systems. Starting point, will be a minimum data set for emergency departments. Joint work will address IT tools and standards and will focus on the definition and format for capturing the Chief Complaint in an Emergency departments.  Part of the collaborative effort is a feasibility study that will engage EDs, EMSs, and industry throughout Europe as well as educational material that will enrich current curricula and is expected to drive implementation of the recommendations.

Memorandum of Understanding

The European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) and the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM) intend to cooperate in joint projects to facilitate digitization in emergency management in the health care sector. It is agreed to create an exploratory co-funded project to produce an action plan for the cooperation. The budget for the project is € 20.000, € 10.000 per each partner for two years.

Background:

The European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) established in 1976 is a Federation of National Associations in Medical and Health Informatics. EFMI has 32 national associations that span from Iceland to Israel and from Portugal to Slovenia with in the European Continent and the European Region as defined by WHO. Through institutional membership academic and corporate organisations participate in the EFMI activities. Fourteen (14) working groups are active in EFMI: EDU – Education, EHR – Electronic Health Records, EVAL – Assessment of Health Information Systems, HIIC – Health Informatics for Interregional Cooperation, HIME – Health Information Management Europe, HOFMI – Human and Organisational Factors of Medical Informatics, IDeS – Information and Decision Support in Biomedicine and Health Care, LIFOSS – Libre/Free and Open Source Software, MIP – Medical Image Processing, NI – Nursing Informatics, PCI – Primary Health Care Informatics, PPD – Personal Portabel Devices, SSE – Security, Safety and Ethics, and THI – Translational Health Informatics.

EFMI’s objectives supported by this agreement are:

• to advance international cooperation and dissemination of information in Medical
• Informatics on a European basis;
• to promote high standards in the application of medical informatics;
• to promote research and development in medical informatics; to encourage high standards
• in education in medical informatics;
• to disseminate knowledge in the field developed within national associations among and
• to the countries constituting EFMI;
• to provide guidelines and accreditation on education and training in Biomedical
• Informatics and Health Informatics;
• to function as the autonomous European Regional Council of the International Medical
• Informatics Association (IMIA).

EFMI mission: to advance the theory and practice of Information Science and Technology within Health and Health Science in the European Region as defined by WHO.

The European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM) is a non-profit making scientific organization with an aim to promote and foster the concept, the philosophy and the art of Emergency Medicine throughout Europe. The main objective of EUSEM is to help and support European countries to implement the specialty of Emergency Medicine. Born as a society of individuals in 1994 from a multidisciplinary group of experts in Emergency Medicine, since 2005 EUSEM also incorporates national society members. There are currently 36 European national societies of Emergency Medicine.

EUSEM’s Mission: Promote and develop research, education, practice and standards of the specialty of Emergency Medicine throughout Europe.

Area of common interest:

Some area of common interest mentioned (not limited to these):

(a) common description of processes/workflows, performance indicators, structures in Emergency Medical Systems and Emergency Departments with emphasis on the use of digital health technologies. A specific project of interest is the standardization of the main concern/complaint and its link to care protocols and health records. There is an internally supported EUSEM project on this topic.

(b) development of educational module(s) related to medical informatics that could be offered in the EUSEM congresses. We could also consider a module developed by EUSEM for medical informatics offered as tutorial in EFMI congresses. For accreditation of educational modules, EUSEM works with EUMS, the European Union of Medical specialists.