With the successful conclusion of the TM-Alliance project, this prestigious consortium has just formulated a strategic Vision for the European Commission. With the underlying philosophy that a vision must be far-sighted, clear, and holistic in order to have a good chance of being accepted and successfully implemented, the consortium formulated a vision for harnessing the salient attributes of information and communication technologies (ICT) towards facilitating citizen-centred healthcare in Europe by the year 2010.

The consortium concluded that traditional healthcare is for the most part centred around the various healthcare service entities, whether they are medical doctors, hospitals, or re-imbursement organisations. With the imminent and unavoidable conversion of paper-based health delivery to full electronic ICT-based eHealth, there is a golden opportunity, particularly facilitated by ICT, to converge the multi-centredness of the present systems to a citizen-centred system. Via this new eHealth system the citizen will be able to interact with providers of healthcare, receive education and be empowered to take greater control of their own health and healthcare. Networks of data repositories will enable better planning and assessment of preventative measures and individual cases or care plans, wherever the citizen is, and whenever desired, without undue delays.

The consortium warned, however, that this vision could not be accomplished without EU-wide standardization and interoperability, which are pre-requisites for progress towards implementing this vision. Indeed consensus on these measures will not only enable realization of this vision, but will also unleash the vast potential of technological ingenuity and investment in research and development in Europe.