News
European Commission highlights importance of ICT in national health
challenges
17 March 2010
In a keynote speech at the World of Health IT conference in
Barcelona, Deputy Director General DG Information Society and Media at
the European Commission Zoran Stančič highlighted the importance of
information and communication technologies (ICTs) to face today’s health
challenges.
He emphasised that eHealth is a key policy priority for the Digital
Agenda currently under preparation by the European Commission and
stressed the Commission’s commitment in supporting interdisciplinary
research and eHealth deployment over the past 20 years, with more than
400 projects funded and a contribution of over €1 billion.
He outlined the key steps undertaken by the Commission to first
supporting connectivity and effective information sharing among health
institutions, and then to connecting citizens and engaging patients in
the process of care.
The Commission has been doing so through a number of policy and
research initiatives, including:
- funding standardized telemedicine services and actions on
crossborder eHealth services (such as epSOS and Calliope) involving
several Member States;
- issuing policy guidelines (eg the eHealth Action Plan, the
Communication on Telemedicine);
- tackling market issues and supporting Member States cooperation
through the Lead Market and the eHealth Governance initiatives;
- promoting projects such as the TENHMS on home
telemonitoring of heart failure, thanks to which patients showed
improvements in survival rates by 15% compared to traditional care;
- addressing legal issues related to liability, licensing of
professionals and privacy protection.
More recently, the Commission has taken further steps by extending
the scope of eHealth beyond its original focus on healthcare and by
engaging in the other two areas linked to our health status: our genetic
predispositions and exogenous determinants such as nutrition, lifestyle
and environment.
Zoran Stančič also stressed the Commission’s efforts to make the
eHealth market — which is the fastest growing pillar of the healthcare
industry — more innovation friendly, transparent and defragmented for
the benefits of businesses, and particularly for the thousands of small
and medium size enterprises waiting for the economic and societal
returns of their innovative ideas. In this respect, the industry and
trade associations are invited to closely cooperate with the Commission
to develop this domain under the umbrella of the Lead Market Initiative.
He highlighted the need for Europe and its member states to work
together and take the next step to consolidate a longterm
vision
which goes beyond research projects and pilots, and which is based on
political commitment, userdriven deployment and a clearer legal
framework.
He stressed how current policy developments such as
the eHealth
Conference Declaration and the eHealth Governance Initiative — can
provide the momentum to progress faster towards shared goals for the
benefits of all.
eHealth Conference Declaration
The high-level Health conferences have
been organised by the countries holding the temporary presidency of the
EU since 2003 and are a challenge in the process carried out by the
member states of working together in favour of greater implementation of
applications in eHealth.
This year's conference has the motto: “eHealth for sustainable
healthcare: global changes through local actions”,
to acknowledge
the urgent perspective of a rapidly ageing European society, the lack of
prevention and prediction of illnesses, the growing demand for quality
attention, the lack of electronic health and the interoperability of the
systems (nationally and internationally).
The full text of the conference declaration is
below:
Following the adoption
by the EPSCO Council of the Conclusions on safe and efficient healthcare
through eHealth, we acknowledge:
That ICT for Health (eHealth) is a tool to improve quality and
patient safety, to modernise national healthcare systems, to
increase their efficiency and make them better adapted to the
individual needs of citizens, patients, health professionals, and
the challenges of an ageing society.
The importance of ensuring that the deployment of ICT in
healthcare, to be successful has to be accompanied by the necessary
organisational reforms, driven by leadership and supported by
adequate skills.
Therefore we welcome:
- Recent efforts by Member States to reform the governance
arrangements for eHealth in Europe through a new mechanism of
cooperation – the European eHealth Governance Initiative;
- The forthcoming update of the Commission Communication on
the "eHealth Action Plan";
- The Commission Consultation on the European Digital Agenda;
- The Council Conclusions on the”Post-i2010 Strategy”;
- The agreed programme of priorities of the TRIO Presidencies
To build on these developments and achieve the overall objective
of enhancing quality and sustainability of healthcare systems, to
make them to benefit from ICT deployment in the best interest of
patients, healthcare professionals and society, we consider that the
following points should be addressed:
1. Political
and strategic commitment
- To use eHealth as an instrument to address health care goals
and priorities both at European and National level;
- The European eHealth Governance Initiative should reinforce
European cooperation at a high level to strengthen the common
eHealth area. It should aim at removing barriers to the
deployment of eHealth, enhance quality, access and safety in
healthcare Europe wide. The Initiative should also contribute to
mainstream e-Health in EU policies and instruments;
- Collaboration with States outside the EU, is also welcome,
for example in the quest for internationally recognised
standards for eHealth including tools and processes.
2. Building confidence and acceptance
- To evaluate eHealth, as much as possible in a standardised
manner, with respect to health outcomes, benefits and cost
effectiveness, including patient safety, accessibility to care
and quality of care;
- To further develop and support, the involvement of
healthcare providers, health professionals, patients and their
representative organisations in order to encourage awareness
and development of eHealth;
- To enhance the cooperation between authorities, healthcare
providers, health professionals as well as between health
professionals and patients, also taking into account ethical and
privacy related aspects;
- To create interactive platforms of stakeholders, to
facilitate common understanding of health needs, benefits and
risks of innovative solutions. The platform should aim at
involving stakeholders in policy planning, implementation and
evaluation of deployment and usages;
- To improve confidence in eHealth solutions by using common
EU or international standards and share components;
- To make recommendations to improve confidence in and
acceptance of eHealth.
3. Bringing legal and ethical clarity and ensuring
protection of personal health data
- Create and support mechanisms enabling exchange of
information about current national provisions for licensing,
accreditation and the regulation of eHealth services to enable
the development of eHealth, and to propose improvements;
- Facilitate common approaches to identification,
authentication and access of health professionals and patients
accessing and using personal health data, especially in the
context of cross border eHealth services (i.e. epSOS);
- Address the legal and ethical constraints for the safe
exchange of medical data across national borders, respecting the
need to protect health data including the integrity of the
patient data;
- Address the levels of consent given by patients for
different uses of their medical data from the perspective of
patients’ rights;
- Clarify the existing legal framework for eHealth, in
particular on: telemedicine, including across borders; and the
application of the recently amended Directive on medical
devices .
4. Solving interoperability issues
- Resolve legal, regulatory and organisational barriers to
eHealth interoperability;
- Support semantic interoperability and define a medium term
strategy based on existing or emerging EU and international
standards;
- Develop internationally-recognised common standards and
certification of testing to facilitate their deployment and use
in all eHealth applications.
5. Linking eHealth policy to competitiveness,
innovation and research as well as to cohesion and inclusion
policies
- Promote further collaboration between the European
Commission and Member States, to support the implementation of
health goals and priorities using eHealth;
- Promote networking and cooperation among public procurers in
the development process of ICT solutions for health, to learn
from best practices and to incorporate ICT standards in
requirements for eHealth systems;
- Strengthen the links between the EU policies for health,
research and innovation, competitiveness and regional
development, including relevant criteria for eHealth development
in those European, national and regional initiatives;
- Support the deployment of a mobile communication
infrastructure to fully enable eHealth in general and
telemedicine, in particular. Research on mobile health has to
be pursued in relationship with the broadband package and
infrastructure development.
In conclusion we:
- Call for policy coordination amongst the various areas where
eHealth can have an impact on citizens' health in order to
enhance benefits for patients, healthcare systems and society;
- Recognise the need for stronger synergies with policy areas
like competitiveness, research and regional development both at
European and national levels;
- Call for the importance of eHealth to be underlined in the
framework of the European Digital Agenda;
- Aim at using ICT tools for Health to scale up benefits to
patients, healthcare systems and society. Therefore welcome
large scale actions at European level to link research,
innovation and deployment and invite the Commission to report on
progresses made in this area. Such types of actions could
contribute to tackle issues such as technical feasibility, legal
certainty, awareness and convincing business cases;
- Recognise the importance of involving all stakeholders, in
the strategic planning, validation and implementation of
eHealth;
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