With the introduction of “personal health systems,” eHealth in Europe focuses on interoperability.
eHealth experts in Europe said in order to reap the full benefit of personal health systems, health stakeholders must understand and support the range of challenges in facilitating the ory/interoperability" target="_blank" class="directory-item-link">interoperability personal health systems, across technical to organizational and legal aspects.
The European Commission’s Communication on Cross-border Interoperability of Electronic Health Records called for action to support a wider understanding of interoperability amongst key stakeholders. The Commission will begin funding a Support Action to promote interoperability among personal health systems and to other eHealth systems.
The SmartPersonalHealth project began January 1, 2010 as a collaborative effort by Continua Alliance, the European Telecommunication Standards Institute, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, Empirica, coordinated by The Centre, and will run for one year, Commission officials said.
In order to raise awareness, the SmartPersonalHealth will host three thematically focused regional stakeholder workshops and one central pan-European PHS Interoperability Conference, Commission officials said. Stakeholder groups including national health system representatives, practitioners, experts and users will be invited to present and discuss their experience, achievements and difficulties with a view to generating a debate on how to address current and future challenges.
Further networking and dialogue with healthcare providers, patients, industry, insurers, and standards development organizations will be carried out. Contributions from the workshops and related networking will result in a report to the European Commission addressing the current status, and highlighting concerns, barriers and incentives to accelerate the development and adoption of interoperable personal health systems.
Commission official said the Continua Health Alliance web site will be providing information in a section dedicated to the SmartPersonalHealth project at http://sph.continuaalliance.org.
