On 23 April 2026, at a DMEA session on international care networks, EHTEL, together with the Althaia Foundation, will showcase the Manresa Integrated Social Care and Services (SISS) success story and provide a quick glance at the Laurel project for context.

DMEA is Europe’s leading digital health industry, which gathers over 20,000 visitors, almost 900 exhibitors, and 470 speakers. Each year, experts from the digital health world meet up in Berlin. In addition to a comprehensive market overview, the three-day conference offers a wide range of opportunities for dialogue, networking, knowledge transfer, and effective customer acquisition.

The one-hour session is entitled “Strong together for tomorrow's healthcare – International perspectives on networked healthcare”.

Five successful regional initiatives from Europe and the USA will give elevator pitches and provide insights into their care networks, cooperation models and technological approaches.

Focused on implementation experiences and take-aways for regional care networks in Germany and elsewhere, the session is structured around these four questions: 

• What were the key success factors?
• What were the biggest hurdles?
• What mistakes would be avoided today?
• Which lessons learned are particularly relevant for the German context?

Here’s the presenters’ line up – speakers range from Catalonia to New York, and from England to Finland and Germany:

• New York as a blueprint for digital health regions in Germany – lessons from an interoperable care network | Timo Stöber, InterSystems GmbH
• Adding value through shared digital records: How Catalonia ensures that all professionals and patients benefit from digitalization in primary care: The Manresa i-LTC experience (EHTEL & Althaia Foundation session) | Bartomeu Ayala Marquez, Althaia Manresa University Assistance Network, Catalonia, Spain
• Building regional digital health networks: The Finnish wellbeing counties collaboration | Better Deutschland GmbH | Teemu Mäkelä, Päijät-Häme Wellbeing Services County, Finland
• Digitally connected neighbourhoods – looking beyond national borders at patient-centred health regions in England | Jan Pilhar, IBM
• Overcoming boundaries, connecting care: How cross-location hospital networks are redefining efficiency and quality | Alexander Schellinger, Siemens Healthineers AG | Alexander Poppinga, Evangelisches Krankenhaus Oldenburg, Germany

This session is organised and conducted by the German Association of Healthcare IT Vendors (bvitg e. V.). BVITG has been organising DMEA since 2007. In 2019, the new label, DMEA - Digital Medical Expertise & Applications, replaced the earlier conference title conhIT (Connecting Healthcare IT).

EHTEL contact point: Sophia Schlette