EU funds range of projects to boost hi-tech medicine

Date: 15/07/1999

By Rory Watson

ADVANCES in medical science are being accompanied by huge technological strides which will have a major impact on the public health sector.

Dubbed 'health-care telematics', the interface between these two very different disciplines is being actively supported by the EU, which is keen to encourage research into computer or telecommunication techniques which can be used to improve its citizens' health.

From the relatively modest start of the Advanced Informatics in Medicine programme with its 20-million euro budget 11 years ago, the EU has invested €300 million over the past ten years in healthcare telematics projects through its various overall R&D programmes.

The sum is still a tiny fraction of the 550 billion euro spent each year by EU governments on public health, but it now helps the Commission to part-finance 130 R&D projects and support 1,300 research centres, hospitals, professional associations and health authorities as well as connecting 7,000 citizens directly to health-care telematics.

The use of telemedicine to overcome the distances which can exist between doctor and patient is one area which has expanded along with the growth in information technology. It was previously largely confined to providing services to distant or isolated populations such as islanders, sailors and people suffering from natural catastrophes, but is now gradually being used as an everyday tool in ordinary health care.

The Commission, which is helping to finance 20 separate projects concentrating on emergency telemedicine, teleconsultation and teletraining, believes that these techniques will be widely used during the life of the EU's Fifth Framework R&D Programme. There are already almost 200 such programmes in France and some 100 in Sweden.

Computerisation is also being used to control health-care costs, with a recent survey of health-care professionals citing the introduction of electronic health-care records (HER) as a major priority. Less than 15% of European hospitals have integrated clinical and administrative HER systems and the Commission is helping to plug this gap by supporting 14 separate research schemes throughout the Union.

In the Fifth R&D programme, which began operating last year and will run until 2002 with an overall budget of some 2.4 billion euro, the Commission has declared its intention to support projects which will examine the impact of environmental factors on public health.

Invitations for research centres to submit tenders went out in March and the replies are now being processed. Future projects will concentrate on a number of specific themes: food, nutrition and health; the control of infectious diseases; the exploitation of scientific and technological advances; and examination of factors which can promote healthy ageing.

A separate category of projects will focus on generic research and possible cures for chronic and degenerative diseases as well as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular illnesses.

The scope of the new 'Environment and Health' programme with its 160-million euro budget will allow the Union to sponsor research into the eventual effects of electromagnetic radiation on health.

In particular, it will be able to encourage epidemiological and biomedical studies to determine the possible health effects of electro-magnetic radiation from, among other things, cellular phones.

This will be in addition to research already being carried out under the existing Biomed programme, which began in 1994 and is now winding down.

Separate projects at the University of Zagreb and the Karolinska Institute are looking into the biomedical and cancerous effects of electromagnetic fields, while a third project is examining the possibility of a causal connection between exposure to magnetic fields and incidences of leukaemia in children.

The programme is also supporting work by the German cancer research centre into cancer risks among airline pilots and cabin crew.

In this age of computers, another Biomed-sponsored project will undoubtedly be of interest to large numbers of people hunched over keyboards. The study, launched last year and due to run until 2001, is examining factors such as posture, poor equipment, excessive workloads, lack of variety and working against deadlines which can cause stress at work and lead to repetitive strain injury.