A step towards the electronic EHIC

The Seventh Steering Committee Meeting of the NETC@RDS project took place on 6-7 November 2008 in Le Mans, at GIE-SV premises. The meeting was attended by the project partners, the EC project officer and a representative of the HPRO CARD (Healthcare Professional Card) project.

The NETC@RDS services was exhibited at the traditional “salon des Cartes” which took place in Paris 4-6 November 2008. A NETC@RDS dedicated booth was installed by GIE-SV to demonstrate the service. 

On behalf of the NETC@RDS consortium of European partners, the SESAM Vitale Economic Interest Grouping (EIG) put an EHIC TEST SET at the disposal of those business and industry companies, which are aiming to implement Optical Card Readers (OCR) for the EHIC and put them to the test then to the market place. Instructions how to get the EHIC TEST SET are downloadable in French from the below URL link:

http://www.sesam-vitale.fr/programme/pdf/netcards-inf-001-ProcedureJeuxTestCEAM.pdf

NETC@RDS piloting activities have been extended to Switzerland (Kanton Basel - city). The opportunity is to prepare conditions for making the service operational during the European Football Championships 2008. Two hospitals have been integrated as NETC@RDS service points: St. Clara Hospital (Basel) and University hospital (Basel). These hospitals have been equipped with card-readers, optical scanners and the necessary software. The initiative is conducted by Swiss healthcare authorities of the city of Basel.

New NETC@RDS service sites have been launched in Slovakia recently. While the previous tendency has been to focus on hospitals only, this time two pharmacies have also been taken on board. Further NETC@RDS service points will also be operating during the European football championship (EUROPA 2008) in Switzerland this summer. 
 
These recent achievements of the NETC@RDS project follow the earlier works, which have developed and tested practical solution implementations for the electronic European Health Insurance Card (eEHIC) in pilot regions of 10 Members States. The currently running Initial Deployment phase plans to add new sites in 15 European countries to a total of 305 service sites (566 service points) to enable "non-planned" health care for European citizens who provide evidence of entitlement.
 
The list of all service points is available online at: http://www.zi-berlin.de/netcards/pilots.htm

The NETC@RDS application has been exhibited at the Health Information Technologies 2008 fair in Paris (27-30 May). Under the coordination of GIE-SV and AP-HP and the support of the industrial partner Gemalto, the IT solution has been presented and demonstrated to visitors. More information on this event at http://www.health-it.fr/exposition/exhibition.asp

The Fifth Steering Committee Meeting of the NETC@RDS project took place on 26-27 May in the beautiful city of Maastricht at the Limburg County Hall where the EU Treaty was signed in 1992.

In the frame of the EUReGov initiative, a recent workshop has been organised with the objective to gain further insight into processes of Europeanisation of eGovernment, to share knowledge and achievements by projects and initiatives in this sector and facilitate the exchange of ideas amongst relevant stakeholders. The NETC@RDS success story and current implementation have been illustrated at the workshop by Guillaume Aflalo, representing GIE-SESAM Vitale.

http://www.epractice.eu/workshop/LinkingUpeGov