Advisory Board

The advisory group is an expert panel of specialists in different areas of eHealth. It meets regularly throughout the project duration. It seeks to give advice and guidance to the project team. It includes experts who have been working in the eHealth area for a number of years:

Antoine Geissbuhler, MD, is a Professor of Medical Informatics, Chairman of the Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics at Geneva University School of Medicine, and Director of the Service of Medical Informatics at Geneva University Hospitals. He graduated from Geneva University School of Medicine in 1991 and received his doctorate for work on tridimensional reconstruction of positron emission tomography images. After a post-doctoral fellowship in medical informatics at the University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University, he became associate professor of biomedical informatics and vice-chairman of the Division of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In 1999,he returned to Geneva to head the Division of Medical Informatics in Geneva University Hospitals and School of Medicine. He is author of more than 50 scientific publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and his current research focuses on the development of innovative information systems architectures and computer-based tools for improving the quality and efficiency of care processes, at the local level of the hospital, the regional level of a community healthcare informatics network, and at the global level with the development of a south-south telemedicine network in Western Africa.

Véronique Lessens is a market research analyst at Agfa Healthcare. She joined the Strategy & Business Development department of Agfa in mid 2006. The department is organised as a centre of excellence which provides strategy and market and intelligence services to the Agfa HealthCare organisation. Before joining Agfa, she was manager at Deloitte where she gained more than 10 years of professional consulting experience in the Health Care & Life Science sector. eHealth issues were her main areas of expertise. Since its inception in 2001, she had been manager of the Health Information Network Europe (www.hineurope.com) project, which was initiated by the European Commission and hosted by Deloitte. While her activities were targeted primarily at ICT companies, shealso played a key role in informing and assisting strategic planning and investment decisions for governments, health authorities, payer organisations and healthcare providers.

Prof. Jan Peers, Medical Doctor and Specialist in Internal Medicine, he was for almost 30 years Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director of the University Hospital of the Catholic University of Leuven. During this period, he developed the hospital into a leading European academic medical Centre, through expanding its capacity, implementing innovative health care technologies, and adapting the hospital’s care organisation and information systems.
He was involved in Belgian policy making in health care as Advisor to the Minister of Health, as member or president of many advisory boards in the Ministry of Health and the Institute for Health Insurance, and as an administrator of health care institutes. He was Professor in Health Care Organisation and Management at the University of Leuven from 1980 to 2004.

Peter Singleton, MA, MBA, is Director of Cambridge Health Informatics Limited. He was Senior Associate at the Judge Institute of Management, Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom. Prior to completing his MBA in 2000, Peter also held positions at Datawatch International, Financial Modelling International Limited (FMI), MicroArt Consultants Limited, Albany Life Assurance and Clerical Medical & General Life Assurance Society. His research interests are in the field of electronic health records; privacy and confidentiality, patient involvement, ethical issues, effective use of information within healthcare; value-chain improvements; market-entry strategies; and business models and efficiencies that are particularly IT-related.

Jean-Pierre Thierry, MD, is chief Information Officer Hôpital Simone Veil (Paris area), and is a specialist of health care organisation and economy, and biomedical and healthcare information technology. He has 20 years experience in consulting and project management for the industry as well as for governments or hospitals. He has worked for several professional organisations at a national level. He has an extensive knowledge of European Commission activity in healthcare IT with in-depth experience of EU projects and is also familiar with non-EU healthcare systems. He worked on projects for the French Ministry of Health,, and has established cooperative work with the national Group for the Modernisation of Hospital Information Systems (GMSIH) on two topics: patient identification and security. He wrote a market study (EU, US and CEEC) of medical decision support tools applications. Dr. Thierry was director of the health technology and strategy department of the CNEH (Centre National d’Expertise Hospitalière). He also developed the concept and implemented the French "virtual hospital" known as the "Telemedicine And Telecom Unit" (UTT). His main interests include topics like health care systems organization and regulation, marketing and industrial strategy analysis, telemedicine, biomedical equipment and devices, medical innovation, public relation and media. He has been a lecturer and keynote speaker at numerous meetings and symposia (France and abroad). His publications include more than 100 papers on innovation, technology, health economics. He is the founder of the national hospital magazine "Decision Santé" in 1991.

Dr. Petra Wilson is a Director of CISCO Internet Business Solutions. She was previously the Associate Director of EHMA with responsibility for running its Brussels Office. She has a considerable background in eHealth, having spent 7 years at the European Commission in its eHealth Unit with lead responsibility for legal, ethical and organisational issues in eHealth. During her time at the Commission, Dr Wilson was responsible for co-ordinating the work of a number of departments in the implementation of the health chapters of eEurope2002, eEurope+ and eEurope 2005. This included the production of the Communication on Quality Criteria for Health related Websites and the organisation of the first eEurope eHealth Ministerial conference in 2003. On leaving the Commission, Petra Wilson returned to her health services roots in taking up the position of Associate Director of EHMA, where she has continued to foster eHealth activities, in particular as author of the Mapping eHealth report which was disseminated at the eEurope eHealth Conference in Cork in 2004. Petra continues to work on health information technologies with EHMA members as well as in her role as an editorial advisor to the British Medical Journal for the Information in Practice section.

Diane Whitehouse. In April 2007, Diane formed the business partnership, The Castlegate Consultancy, which concentrates on advising electronic public services’ policy-makers, especially in the domain of eHealth. Previously, for an eight-year period, she worked as a European Commission (EC) official in the Directorate-General for Information Society and Media, in the two fields of eHealth and eInclusion. Prior to joining the EC, Diane worked in areas related to action research, civic and human rights, publishing, and academia. She has sat on a number of not-for-profit and charity boards in her fields of expertise. Diane’s educational background is in the social, ethical, and organisational aspects of information systems, and she has co-authored and co-edited both a number of key books in these fields and over thirty articles. In August 2007, Diane’s services to the international association, the International Federation for Information Processing, were recognised with a silver core award.