Connecting Healthcare Professionals via ICT: Tele-Mentoring & Consultation (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Paul Fairchild. I'm your moderator for today and it's my pleasure to welcome you all here to the Connecting Healthcare Professionals via ICT tele-mentoring and tele-consultation in Primary Healthcare Conference. As you know, the PrimeCare IT project partners from different Baltic Sea countries have been working together to find solutions to stop the brain drain of healthcare professionals, especially from rural areas. They've been developing, testing and piloting tele-monitoring and tele-consultation solutions. Today we're going to hear some of the results of this work and get some information on which direction we are heading in in this field. As it states in the agenda, we have some great speakers here today. We will also have the honour of hearing political decision-makers discussing the issues of e-health solutions in different countries during our round-table discussion in session 2 from 10.30 to 12 o'clock. We will pause for lunch from 12 o'clock until 1 o'clock and then after that, in session 3, we'll hear some thoughts on the reasons why this is such an important subject, the possibilities and impacts of tele-medicine. After the coffee break, we'll hear the results of some of the pilot projects conducted in different countries and hear about the concrete results that have already been achieved by this project. At the end of the round-table discussion and at the end of session 3 and 4, there will be an opportunity for you all to ask questions to our panellists and to our speakers and we hope that you will take advantage of that opportunity to find out more. We'll wrap up the formal part of the day at 5 o'clock p.m. If you're staying for the dinner, of course there's plenty of time to discuss these matters further from 7 o'clock till 10 o'clock this evening. So, we'll get right on with it and start session 1. We have a couple of welcome speeches for you. First of all, I'd like to welcome onto the stage Mrs. Evie Nourmet, Deputy Secretary-General on Health of the Ministry of Social Affairs in Estonia. Welcome.