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A plethora of devices and applications, some converging from the consumer electronics world, are coming onto the market and are being recommended by doctors and health insurers to help us all monitor our health and wellness. These tools, called "personal health systems" (PHS), are a key element of the growth of eHealth in Europe.
Their full benefit can only be realised if they are interoperable - that is, if a device from one vendor works easily and seamlessly with other eHealth applications.
In order to let Europe reap the full benefit of personal health systems, health stakeholders must understand and support the range of challenges in facilitating the interoperability personal health systems, across technical to organisational and legal aspects.
Noting the importance of this issue 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. It has therefore funded a Support Action to promote interoperability among personal health systems and to other eHealth systems. The SmartPersonalHealth project started on 1st of January 2010 and will run for one year.
Key awareness raising activities of SmartPersonalHealth will include three thematically focused regional stakeholder workshops and one central pan-European PHS Interoperability Conference. 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 organisations 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.
SmartPersonalHealth is a project developed by Continua Alliance, the European Telecommunication Standards Institute, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, Empirica, coordinated by The Centre.
For further information, please visit:
http://sph.continuaalliance.org
About the partners in SmartPersonalHealth Project
Continua Alliance is the global industry consortium to promote the interoperability of PHS devices and systems counting more than 200 technology, medical device and health care members worldwide.
ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, produces globally applicable standards for Information & Communications Technologies. ETSI is recognised as an official European Standards Organisation by the European Union, enabling valuable access to European markets.
IHE, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, is a global initiative involving more than 300 stakeholders (healthcare professional associations, industry, health authorities, etc.), the worldwide reference organisation for the interoperability of healthcare information systems and devices.
Empirica is a Bonn based European research institute with a broad understanding of political, business and socio-economic issues surrounding eServices and telematics applications.
The Centre, coordinating the project, is a think-do-tank with expertise in project coordination, EU policies and regulation, events organization, and communication. |
