VdGM is delighted to announce that the Exchange Prize Competition is now open to all Hippokrates Exchange visitors who have completed the exchange and have been issued a Certificate of Completion. The restriction on having granted funds to undertake the exchange is no longer active.

The workshop Social Media and mHealth Now! Applications in Primary Care will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Saturday 29th June 2013, at 10.30am (Small Theatre). Moderated by Raluca Zoitanu, Soleman Begg, Charilaos (Harris) Lygidakis, Martin Sattler, Raquel Gomez Bravo, Tiago Villanueva and Sara Rigon. Social media is becoming part of everyday life for most individuals and companies. General practitioners/family doctors and their patients follow this trend as well, although at different pace in various countries around the world. For the past two years Vasco da Gama Movement, the Wonca Europe network for young and future GPs, showed in its workshops how Social Media can be used by GPs to strengthen organizations, their practice or how to use it as a tool to be easily and conveniently updated with medical and non medical information. Social Media refers to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, Youtube and many more tools which allow people to interact over the Internet - create, exchange, comment and share. In this workshop we will focus more on how Social Media can be used in Primary Care for patient care. How can patients be empowered by using Social Media ? What are the limits for both patients and professionals in using Social Media? Do we need a code of conduct?

The workshop Shifting perspectives in healthcare: becoming partners with patients will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Thursday 27th June 2013, at 2pm (room Club E). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement and WONCA Europe, moderated by Carl Steylaerts, Charilaos (Harris) Lygidakis, Raquel Gomez-Bravo and Greg Irving. Background: The Internet-savvy users, the so called e-patients, seek online health information, connect and collaborate with others and take advantage of this medium not only for decision making and management of their own condition, but also for education and advocacy purposes. The connectivity and the wide availability of a large amount of data, thanks to worldwide health databases, mobile devices and personal health records, enable the patients to play an active role in healthcare at an individual and community level, as shown by the connected communities of care and the movement of participatory medicine. Relationships between clinicians and patients are bound to be transformed fundamentally. In this context, it is crucial now, more than ever, that Family Doctors become partners with patients and lead the way into a new paradigm of Medicine.

The VdGM is happy to announce the winners of this year Carosino and Hippokrates Exchange Prizes, which award respectively the best exchange in a rural and any setting which took place in 2011 or 2012.