TMA-Bridge team held a workshop: “Towards Interoperable eHealth for Europe: Strategic plan for trans-national health services on eHealth interoperability strategy” on the 20-21 June 2005.
From Identifying Challenges to Concrete Recommendations
The workshop, hosted by the WHO Europe office in Barcelona, Spain was comprised of 20 experts from 10 EU Member States who contributed to the development of detailed recommendation for the European Commission (EC) and the governments of the EU Member States.
This Strategy Workshop followed logically from the recent Interoperability Workshop held at ESTEC (18-19 March 2005) where many challenges to interoperability in eHealth were identified; requirements and recommendations for facing these challenges were formulated. In the Strategy Workshop, on-going European initiatives were analysed, gaps identified, and recommendations made for concrete proposals and the next tactical steps.
An Integrated Approach across all Frameworks
In keeping with the TMA’s partners’ holistic approach, the workshop participants divided into small working groups focused on policy, organisational and social, and technical frameworks. Their findings and recommendations were reported and discussed in plenary sessions, which successfully allowed intensive concentrated effort as well as broad review and debate.
Focussed Proposals Challenge the EC and the Member States
Recommendations were formulated for concrete actions, pilots, and specific studies with well-defined tactical milestones to be achieved before 2010. The recommendations will be delivered to the EC in August 2005 as part of the TMA-Bridge mandate and carried forward to EC Member States.
Towards Making the eHealth Action Plan Reality
The strategic recommendations made by TMA-Bridge are made in support the EC eHealth Action Plan and its transformation into reality. The creation of concrete actions to enable the mobile European citizen to access health services for which they are eligible, supported and enabled by modern ICT infrastructure. Success in this domain will also help facilitate European leadership in this cutting edge technology.
