Oertle, MD MSc Marc

Quality and Safety: the framework for our annual congress has been defined in order to focus on important issues and outcomes related to medical informatics. As information technologies are nearly irreplaceable in healthcare these days, more and more emphasis must be placed on how to implement and how to use these entities in our everyday practice.

Thus, quality and safety are not only an aim for the usage of ICT but also for their very design and functioning. An evidence base has to be set and many contributions are related to this issue.

One of the main topics of the proceedings is e-medication. The importance of structured, well-designed and -maintained databases is shown, and content and limitations of clinical decision support are also discussed. E-medication still is a topic and the Swiss environment is still under construction concerning this area of e-health as shown by the title of the roundtable: “Switzerland isn’t ready for e-medication”.

And the missing interrogative sign is not by mistake.

Education deserves a place on stage as well. What skills do our information officers need, how do we transfer the existing evidence base and the existing knowledge body into our daily work and where can we teach our students (and who should do this)? Important questions in the area of medical informatics in Switzerland, where everyone asks for work to be done and only few places offer structured educational programmes.

Last but not least: what could be better to profit from than our mistakes and failures? Success stories are all around us and it’s far easier to report on small pieces of progress than on big problems. Nevertheless, we need those brave presentations on things that should or could have been made better or have even been avoided. Hopefully, a growing community will engage in this very important part of medical informatics, and we would be glad to receive far more reports on missed goals – in fact because we truly care about good quality and safety and do not just pay lip service to it.

The Swiss Society for Medical Informatics wishes you a fruitful and interesting annual congress!

Correspondence

Correspondence:

Dr. med. Marc Oertle

Leitender Arzt Medizin/Medizininformatik

Krankenhausstrasse 12

CH-3600 Thun

Marc.Oertle[at]spitalstag.ch

Copyright

Published under the copyright license
“Attribution – Non-Commercial – NoDerivatives 4.0”.
No commercial reuse without permission.
See: emh.ch/en/emh/rights-and-licences/