eHealth Interoperability Workshop 2004: Government and Expert View

"(Mobile) European citizens should be able to receive medical treatment based on their medical history throughout Europe".

Following this commitment a draft action plan was proposed and discussed during the panel session and a revised version will soon be submitted to all participants. We expect that it will recommend the setting-up of an official "European eHealth IOp (Inter-Operability) Group". Dr. Gottfried T.W. Dietzel, the chairman of the meeting concluded "We have a unique chance to define a roadmap on eHealth interoperability. Interoperability is triggering cooperation between Member States and countries. This roadmap could focus on two priority areas where interoperability is an issue

• Electronic medication management
• Electronic Health Record Communication"

All presentations and related documents are available in the download section below.

Mission: To held an informal meeting of government representatives together with key standardisation experts dealing with interoperability problems with the target to agree upon a draft action plan for collaboration on interoperability aspects. Therefore it is necessary to identify key healthcare scenarios and eHealth applications, which define the most urgent need and the priority issues to achieve. One of the targets is to ensure patient mobility in an electronically enhanced healthcare environment as it is one goal of European policies.

Background: Many European states have agreed upon national Health-IT strategies and are now moving forward to the implementation of national telematic infrastructures as a supporting platform for the nationwide roll-out of eHealth services like ePrescribing, eBooking and ubiquitously networked electronic health records. Hence, many new services are already or will soon become available for the European consumers and patients. A future-oriented vision of these scenarios and the need for interoperable solutions are addressed in the recent Communication (COM(2004) 356) of the Commission named "e-Health - making healthcare better for European citizens: An action plan for a European e-Health Area".

Also in the electronic world, mobile European citizens should be able to receive medical treatment based on their medical history and conditions throughout Europe. This implies that existing patient related electronic data must be usable at the site of healthcare provision regardless of where healthcare is provided. Hence healthcare IT in Europe must assure interoperability in all dimensions (e.g. networks and cards; syntax and semantics; privacy and security). The demand is further more driven by trans-national services like Internet Pharmacies or Online Consultations, which are not bound to national borders.

While the need for interoperability is so straightforward it remains difficult to ensure interop-erability where it is needed. One step is to establish health telematics infrastructures using sound framework architectures and recent international standards. Yet for making medical data accessible and usable everywhere in Europe more and quite detailed work needs do be done. This mission might only be achieved, if ways for a close and continuous co-operation of the political, legal, medical and technical stakeholders can be achieved. The workshop will therefore focus on:

• Type of patient-oriented services which need to be deployed and which demand interoperable solutions
• The review of existing infrastructures, services and applications (focussing on interoperability issues)
• Methods and processes to establish interoperability
• Political actions to assure progress in line with the EU Council Conclusion on eHealth and the Commission Communication COM (2004) 356.