In the opening speech of the launch event of the Slovenian ECHAlliance Ecosystem the chairman of ECHAlliance Brian O’Connor said: ‘Please applaud the organisers of this event, you’ve prepared a great strategy and plan, and here we are witnessing a great launch event.’ In cooperation with CORAL Europe & HealthDay.si ECHAlliance launched the Slovenian ECHAlliance Ecosystem on 18 February 2016 in Ljubljana. European Connected Health Alliance (ECHAlliance) is an initiative that connects different stakeholders in health and social care in now already 30 ecosystems mainly in Europe, but also in North America and China. HealthDay.si is a community of health-tech companies, startups and other interested organisations that has been organising events and other activities since October 2014 with the aim to help innovative projects and companies in reaching out to global markets.
Integrated care
One of the key speakers was Dianne Gill, ECHAlliance Northern Ireland and Assistant Director MOIC. Dianne explained that in Northern Ireland, where integrated care was introduced to the whole country, positive results are already visible. ‘We have focused on patients not on processes when we introduced our integrated care programs. The results have been very good, the amount of medications used has decreased, hospital stays went down, we are now in better control of waiting times.’ It’s true that their work has been made easier by the support of their government. ‘The ministry for health and ministry for enterprise and trade have signed a memorandum, by which they have exhibited their support for the integrated care projects.’