“We have lift off!”

Corience, the European congenital heart defect (CoHD) web platform is now officially live in the UK where it was launched by the Children's Heart Federation on Friday 30 January 2009 at the Science Museum in London. The 65 delegates represented all of the web platform’s key target audiences: people with CoHD, their families, members of patient support groups, nurses, CoHD clinicians and healthcare policy makers.

Keynote speaker, John Bowis OBE, who is Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London and the Conservative spokesman on Health in the European Parliament, reminded us that behind the statistics – five million people in Europe living with CoHD, one baby in every 133 born with a heart defect, 5000 new cases in UK each year – there are individuals coping with extensive medical treatment, loss and stresses.

Mr Bowis declared, “When a child is born with a heart defect, your life will change, but it need not be devastated. Parents and sisters and brothers and grandparents will have to adapt, and they need to know how; they need to see the options.To have a web network available means that, at the touch of a button, you are able to share and explore experience and expertise across your own country and reach out to people across our continent. It means contact between patient or parent and professionals and scientists. Finding and sharing best practice is at the heart of European Health policy, and it will be the gift of Corience.”