Health Care Communication Systems

The variety of services offered by modern hospitals has been accompanied by a growing need for communications between the many parts of a hospital complex, and services which are based on communications have been not far behind the general growth of information technology and communications. It is accepted that this growth will continue, and with it comes the need for the components to be compatible, in principle to be able to connect with each other, to be economical and easy to manage, and therefore to be rationally organised.

The same reasoning applies to services and updates of existing services need to be developed in accordance with the objectives stated in the Council Decision and the strategy for the whole action. The identification and definition of these services will be governed by the needs of the user and the requirements of transnational exchange of data and information. Developments should be monitored to ensure that the lessons of the past have been learned and actually applied, that advances are made in the acceptability of the services among the people who use them, and that they interoperate and are similar in the way they interoperate.