Elsevier and HIMSS Extend Digital Healthcare Award from Asia Pacific to Europe and Middle East

SINGAPORE, September 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Award recognizes organizations that push the boundaries of excellence in healthcare IT to improve patient care 

Elsevier, a world's leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) will extend the HIMSS-Elsevier Digital Healthcare Award from Asia Pacific to the Middle East and Europe. The award, inaugurated in 2013, recognizes outstanding achievements in the implementation and usage of health information and technology. To further highlight global innovations, Elsevier and HIMSS are broadening the award globally to include Middle East and Europe starting with HIMSS UAE (United Arab Emirates) eHealth Week in December 2015.

The award promotes Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) adoption through sharing information and lessons learned in areas such as implementation strategies, financial return on investments and value of the systems to improve patient care and outcomes.

"It has been a great honor to partner with HIMSS over the past three years to recognize excellent use of healthcare information and technology to improve patient care in Asia Pacific," said Gerrit Bos, Executive Vice President & Managing Director for Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Elsevier. "We hope that expanding the award to Europe and the Middle East will further help recognize organizations in the other parts of the world to hold them up as models for best practice and stimulate innovations.

The impressive submissions coming from the region at the HIMSS AsiaPac15 this year, have demonstrated the increasing recognition of the awards as the platform for choice by many leading organizations. Award recipients included KK Women's and Children's Hospital (Singapore), National University Hospital (Singapore), Aarogyasri Healthcare Trust (India), St. Stephen's Hospital, Uniting Care Health (Australia) and Shanghai Children's Medical Center (China).

Past recipients include Peking University People's Hospital (China), Shanghai East Hospital (China), Prince of Wales Hospital (Hong Kong), Tseung Kwan O Hospital (Hong Kong), Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (India), Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (Korea), Changi General Hospital (Singapore), National Cancer Centre (Singapore) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (Singapore). The recipients were recognized for health IT excellence, from improving medication supply processes to creating new systems and processes to enhance accessibility of information, all of which ultimately are aimed at improving patient safety and quality of care.

"Our partnership with Elsevier has been very fulfilling and we're happy to take the awards further to encourage more outstanding healthcare entities to step forward and showcase their strategies for improvement," said Stephen Lieber, President and CEO of HIMSS. "We're confident that the European and Middle East region will have equally impressive submissions for the awards given their history and robust culture of advancing technologies in the medical, science and health arena. At the end of the day, it's good that organizations from all the regions get to learn and benefit from one another."

Award nominations for HIMSS Middle East UAE eHealth Week have already begun (https://www.uaeehealthweek.org), and application is open to all public and private healthcare organisations based in the Middle East.  

Award recipients will be announced and honored at HIMSS AsiaPac Digital Healthcare Week (6-10 September, 2015), HIMSS UAE eHealth Week (7-10 December, 2015) and eHealth Week in Amsterdam (6-8 June, 2016).

More information can be found on the HIMSS website: http://www.himss.org/

About Elsevier 

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes more than 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact 
Christopher Capot
Director, Corporate Relations
Elsevier
+1-917-704-5174
c.capot@elsevier.com

Jasmine Chng on behalf of Elsevier
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
+65-6303-8474
jchng@waggeneredstrom.com