Dear GMDS members,

we are excited to announce that the XtraTracks lecture series 2025 is now underway! 

The XtraTracks lecture series (www.xtratracks.com) will provide an overview over current telemedical, eHealth and / or AI activities with a special focus on Germany and Canada. All lecturers are international experts in their various fields of research. There will also be enough time for discussion with the lecturers and other participants. We encourage everyone with an interest in these topics to register and participate in this lecture series. If you have a medical and / or IT-background, you are very welcome regardless if you are a professional or a student! Participants can get a CME-certification (2 points for each lecture) from our physicians association (Ärztekammer Westfalen-Lippe).

Next lecture - Provincial Virtual Care for Addressing Patient Emergencies at Their Finger Tips: the BC 811 Experience
Speaker: Kendall Ho
Wednesday, May 14 · 4 - 5:30pm CEST

Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding is a global phenomenon, resulting in admitted patients in the ED, and new patients waiting in the ED waiting rooms to be seen. Meanwhile, a significant portion of these patients in the waiting room could potentially be managed away from ED. How can telehealth and digital health assist in decongesting ED and support patients at their times of urgent needs? In Germany, 116 117 is designed to tackle this issue. This presentation will discuss about the Canadian approach through the lens of the province of British Columbia and its 8-1-1 virtual service. This pan-provincial digital front door aspires to improve patient experiences, reduce ED input volume, and improve patient safety through their health system journeys for optimizing patients and health system’s outcome. We will discuss the evidence to date on this 8-1-1 virtual care service, and how it integrates with the health system as a whole to alleviate the ED crisis in BC, and this line’s future directions. We will then explore opportunities of synergy between Germany and Canada in our respective contexts.

Detailed information about the speakers can be accessed by clicking on the respective lecture titles.

Date

Title

Speaker

Register / Talk

14-05-2025 16:00

Provincial Virtual Care for Addressing Patient Emergencies at Their Finger Tips: the BC 811 Experience

Kendall Ho

Register

21-05-2025 16:00

AI in Medicine - Progress, Perils, and Perspectives

Tim Hahn

Register

28-05-2025 16:00

AI in Bioinformatics: Fighting the global threat of antimicrobial resistance

Dominik Heider

Register

04-06-2025 16:00

MyHealth@EU – European eHealth Infrastructure

Amin Farid Aly / Rudolf Reibel / Alexander Jaekel

Register

11-06-2025 16:00

The Importance of Usablility in Clinical Applications

Andre Kushniruk

Register

18-06-2025 16:00

AI Safety

Elizabeth Boryck

Register

25-06-2025 16:00

University Hospital Telemedicine Network (NUM-UTN)

Sylvia Thun

Register

02-07-2025 16:00

Digital Health Applications

Sven Meister / Leonard Fehring

Register

09-07-2025 16:00

Hospital at Home Models

Ariel Stern

Register

16-07-2025 16:00

Die digitale Hausarztpraxis (Lecture in German)

Stefan Spieren / Sven Meister

Register

23-07-2025 16:00

Die virtuelle Kinder-Sprechstunde in NRW (Lecture in German)

Bernhard Acke

Register