Europeans will only be able to benefit from eHealth if agreement is reached on how to use health data

According to a expert report, Europeans will only be able to benefit from the affordable, less intrusive and more personalised healthcare which ICT can bring if agreement is reached on how to use health data. The report was presented during the celebrations of the eHealth Week 2012 in Copenhagen.
 

The eHealth Task Force, a high-level group of experts, presented a report at eHealth Week 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark, that puts the spotlight on the importance of health data, health literacy and exchange of good practice on eHealth. According to the report, if agreement is reached on how to use health data, European will benefit from the affordable, less intrusive and more personalised healthcare which Information & Communication Technologies (ICT). The European Commission is also working on eHealth. As an example, in July 2011, the Pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing was launched.

The report therefore recommends to the European Commission to create a legal framework and space to manage the massive amounts of health-related data. It also recommends supporting health literacy: Health data needs to be available in a form that patients can understand. Furthermore, to create a 'beacon group' of Member States and regions committed to open data and eHealth, including pioneers in eHealth applications, is another suggestion, as well as to use data power: eHealth applications must prove worthy of users' trust, and re-orient EU funding and policies, i.e. specific eHealth budget lines need to be responsive and to enable the development of good ideas into fast prototyping and testing. Transparency should be required from health institutions through procurement and funding criteria.

The Task Force's recommendations are based on critical preconditions for the effective implementation of eHealth, such as that individuals are the owners and controllers of their own data, with the right to make decisions on access to their data and to be informed about how it will be used; use the data more effectively could transform the provision of care; patients will increasingly demand that their health professionals and institutions use the same technology which they use in everyday life; transparency on the performance of health professionals and institutions enables patients to make more informed choices about where and how they wish to be treated; and service providers need to be aware that there may be sub-groups of the population that are beyond the reach of eHealth, - those who, willingly or otherwise, do not have access to the internet.