Here's an excerpt from EurActive's February 14 interview with Markos Kyprianou, the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection.
[Q] During your hearing in the European Parliament you said the protection of patients' rights, including the right to information, was an area of concern to you. How would you improve the flow of information? Will you propose a 'directive on consumer / patient information' during your term in office (as one MEP suggested during your hearing)?
[A] Later this year I plan to launch an EU health portal. This will provide a single point of access to public health and health-related information produced by the EU and its agencies, as well as being a gateway to health information produced by member state authorities. My hope is that our health portal will improve the flow of information to patients and citizens, including in particular young people. I would like to see every EU country make some basic information available on-line about its healthcare system and link it to our portal. They should include practical information about how citizens from other parts of the EU can access treatment. Of course, we will have to rely on the individual healthcare system around the EU to publish this information on-line, and to keep it up to date. Having a directive on patient information would be one way of establishing a clear obligation for member states to do this – I certainly do not discount this idea. However, I believe we can persuade national healthcare systems to publish more and better information without resorting to legislation. I am very encouraged by the active role member state authorities are playing in our health portal project.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/14/2005 08:37:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
