EU-US eHealth Cooperation Members
Project Support Team
Benoît Abeloos (benoit.abeloos@ec.europa.eu), Policy Officer– Interoperability
and Standardization - epSOS, Health and Well Being Unit, Directorate General
Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
As policy officer, Benoît Abeloos overseas policy activities of the Health and Well
Being Unit related to interoperability and standardization and to the Connecting
Europe Facility. Mr. Abeloos has written the chapter on interoperability and
standardization of the eHealth Action Plan and is also in charge of several eHealth
projects in the area of Interoperability and EHRs, including the large scale pilot
epSOS, Smart Open Services for European Patients (www.epsos.eu), SemanticHealthNet, Antilope, and
Granatum.
Mr. Abeloos conducted the study on the eHealth Interoperability Framework and is also involved in the
interoperability and standardization activities of the eHealth Governance initiative, the eHealth Network
and the eHealth Stakeholders' group. Mr. Abeloos oversees the EHR interoperability work stream of the
EU-US eHealth collaboration initiative and serves as the project officer for the Trillium Bridge project.
Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, Director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Fridsma is the Chief Science Officer and Director of the Office of Science and
Technology in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information
Technology. Prior to arriving at ONC, Dr. Fridsma was on the teaching staff in the
Department of Biomedical Informatics at Arizona State University and, as a
practicing internal medicine physician, had a clinical practice at Mayo Clinic
Scottsdale.
Dr. Fridsma completed his medical training at the University of Michigan in 1990, and his PhD in
Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University in 2003. In his role at ONC, Dr. Fridsma is responsible
for all programs that are focused on providing a foundation for interoperable health information
exchange. He served on the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Board of Directors
from 2005-2008, as well as the Health IT Standards Committee from 2009-2010. Dr. Fridsma currently
serves as a board member of HL7 and the National e-Health Collaborative.
Mark Roche, MD, MSMI, (mrochemd@gmail.com), Vocabulary and Terminology
Subject Matter Expert
Dr. Roche is currently semantic interoperability expert at the Office of the National
Coordinator for Health Information Technology where he provides strategic input to
several ONC initiatives, including Health eDecisions, Data Access Framework and the
EU-US eHealth Cooperation Initiative.
Dr. Roche was formerly adjunct professor at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL,USA) where he lead
the redesign of curriculum for Health-IT Standards and Interoperability course for the Masters in
Medical Informatics graduate program. Beyond government-sponsored initiatives and academia, Dr.
Roche has extensively worked with the EHR vendor industry and healthcare providers with adoption of
clinical messaging, data structure and vocabulary standards. Dr. Roche co-authored interoperability
blueprint for pan-Canadian exchange of health information and managed at Canada Health Infoway
implementation of national interoperability projects across clinical domains. He also co-authored
interoperability specifications for laboratory information exchange in Ontario, and authored common
vocabularies to support laboratory ordering and reporting processes. At National Cancer Institute, Dr.
Roche developed information models for clinical trials data capture and lead design and implementation
of information systems for data capture.
Dr. Roche completed his Doctor in Medicine degree at University of Vienna (Vienna, Austria), postdoctoral fellowship in Bio-medical informatics at National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD), and Master
of Science in Medical Informatics degree at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL). Dr. Roche is also
active member at HL7, AMIA, IHTSDO and HIMSS organizations and participant in various vocabulary
projects
Interoperability of EHR Work Group
Barry Robson, BSc (Hons), PhD, DSc (robsonb@aol.com)
Barry Robson retired after eleven years as an IBM executive, the last five as
Chief Scientific Officer IBM Global Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, and Life
Sciences, specializing in the futurology, market analysis, project development,
and algorithmics of nationwide architectures for medicine. He co-founded
projects that led to Blue Gene and a major IBM medical IT initiative.
Before joining IBM, Barry helped start up several biomedical UK and US start-ups or divisions, and was
the scientific founder of Proteus International plc (later Protherics plc, and now part of the British
Technology Group). He is co-founder of the recent QEXL Consortium for research into universal
exchange languages for healthcare. He holds a PhD in medical biochemistry and a DSc, a higher UK
doctorate, in computational and quantum biomolecular chemistry, and has published some 265 papers,
patents and books on life sciences and healthcare. His current coding projects include universal
exchange language mediation between MUMPS/VistA, and HL7 pipe/hat and CDA, privacy and consent
mechanisms for provider access, and for data mining access for overall system quality control, public
health, EBM, and Clinical Decision Support systems.
Kyriacos Hatzaras, MEng, ACGI, MPhil, CEng, GCP (kyriakos.hatzaras@kcl.ac.uk),
Senior Research Solutions Analyst, Enterprise Application Solutions, IT Services,
King’s College London
Kyriacos Hatzaras is a Senior Research Solutions Analyst at King’s College London
and is responsible for IT use in clinical and research functions. He is also a Visiting
Fellow at Imperial College London. Current work includes the evaluation and
redesign of a clinical trial IT platform; design of a new counseling information
system linked to the NHS; and, a new infection control medical device for health
professionals.
Prior work at Imperial College included the design and implementation of a clinical antibiotic therapy
and AMR decision support system for use in the three Imperial College hospitals; design of an
information assurance framework for patient data use in the Virtual Physiological Human FP7 research
Network of Excellence; and evaluation of the Slovene national eHealth project and UK telecare pilots.
Mr. Hatzaras previous experience includes qualitative information and medical technology assessment,
international ICT system design and implementation. He holds a MEng in Electrical Engineering with
Management from Imperial College London, a MPhil in European Studies from the London School of
Economics, and became a chartered engineer with Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
Gerard Freriks, MD (gerard.freriks@EN13606.org), Director of ERS B.V., and
Secretary of the EN13606 Association
Dr. Freriks trained as a general practitioner and has been active in IT for 40 years
and is active in HL7, CEN and ISO for 17 years. For 7 years, Dr. Freriks was a
conveyor of WG1 of CEN/tc251 working on the Concurrent Use standards (EHRcommunication, Health Information Service Architecture and System of
Concepts for Continuity of Care). He is also active in various projects such as
CIMI, SemanticHealthNet, Antilope, EXPAND, and SALUS.
Robert Coli, MD, Founder, Chairman and CEO of the Diagnostic Information
System Company (rdcolidisco@yahoo.com)
Dr. Coli is a retired physician from a private medical practice in Rhode Island and is
also the founder, Chairman and CEO of the Diagnostic Information System
Company. Dr. Coli is a graduate of Tufts University and received his Doctor of
Medicine from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1963. He
performed his Internal Medicine internship and residency at the Tufts New England Medical Center
Hospitals and his Gastroenterology Fellowship at Rhode Island Hospital.
In 1967, he established Gastrointestinal Associates, a private internal medicine and gastroenterology
practice in Warwick, Rhode Island and continued to provide direct patient care until retiring in
December 2004. Between 1979 and 1983, he was instrumental in organizing and leading 250 private and
academic Rhode Island physicians to finance and incorporate Ocean State Physicians Health Plan the
nation’s first statewide, for-profit Independent Practice Association (IPA) model HMO. Since the passage
of ARRA/HITECH in February 2009 and the Affordable Care Act on March 2010, he has focused his
efforts on filling a major unmet market need for both physicians and patients by commercializing the
patented Diagnostic Information System technology tool. The goal of the physician-led Diagnostic
Information System Company is to enable the efficient viewing and sharing the results of all available
diagnostic tests across all points of care by providing a platform-neutral, standardized and clinically
integrated reporting format for EHR, PHR and HIE platforms.
Since February 2011, he has been a committed member of the S&I Framework’s Lab Results Interface
(LRI) + Lab Orders Interface (LOI) + eDOS (Electronic Directory of Services) initiatives and since
September 2012, he has been participating in the Blue Button Plus Initiative.
Tatjana Prenđa Trupec, MCS (tatjana.prendja-trupec@hzzo.hr),
CIO/Deputy Director of Croatian Health Insurance Fund, An expert for
eHealth
Tatjana Prenđa Trupec, MCS was born in Zadar, Croatia and graduated from
the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in
1998, where she majored in Computer Science, finished Academy for
Political Development of the Council of Europe and is currently finishing an
EMBA. Within 15 years of her career, she worked as an IT manager, project manager and consultant for
the Ministry of Health; Ministry of Justic;, Ministry of Crafts; Cap Gemini; World Bank and the Delegation
of the European Union in the Republic of Croatia. Today, she is leading the development of the e-Health
in Croatia. In 2012, she became Assistant Director for IT at CHIF, and is currently the Deputy Director at
CHIF. She was a member of negotiation team during Croatian accession to EU for Chapter 23: Judiciary
and Human Rights.
Mrs. Prenđa Trupec is the Croatian representative in eHealth Network, an EHTEL representative for
Ministry of Health of the Republic of Croatia and is also a member of ad-hoc Working Group of the
World Health Organization, writing Health Information Strategy for Europe. Within the epSOS project,
she is taking the role of Croatian representative / head of National Contact Point working as project
coordinator, EGA and PSB member. She has also been participating in programming for Structural Funds
for eHealth sector. She is a member of steering committee of HL7 organization in Croatia, and also a
member of committee for e-health at the Academy of Medical Sciences of Croatia.
Hrvoje Belani, MSc EE (hrvoje.belani@hzzo.hr), Chief Information
Security Officer of Croatian Health Insurance Fund, An expert for ICT
Hrvoje Belani, MSc EE was born in Koprivnica, Croatia and graduated from
the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
in 2003 where he majored in Telecommunications and Informatics. He is
an experienced software engineer, with an advanced knowledge of
software methods and processes, requirements engineering and business
process modeling. From 2010, he worked as a senior inspector for informatics in IT division of CHIF and
as chief information security officer. He is an adjunct lecturer in information systems development at
VERN' University of Applied Sciences. He is also a PhD student at University of Zagreb, Faculty of
Electrical Engineering and Computing, Croatia.
Mr. Belani is working as a project manager representing Croatian Health Insurance Fund within epSOS
project, and is also participating as EGA and PSB deputy member. He is one of representatives of
Croatian Health Insurance Fund at HL7 Croatia. He is also a management committee member
representing Croatia in ICT COST Action IC1203: ENERGIC - European Network Exploring Research into
Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing: software and methodologies for harnessing geographic
information from the crowd.