Health Online - eHealth 2003  

eHealth 2003:  Conference and Exhibition

The eHealth 2003 High Level Conference on "The contribution of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to Health" will take place in Brussels, Charlemagne building, on 22-23 May 2003, in support of the objectives of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan for Health.

Health Online: A Matter of Strategic Importance

The Health Online action underlines the strategic importance of full exploitation of new information technologies in the public administration of health, for the benefit of the citizen as consumer of both health care services and health information. 

The Member States' administration is, of course, the key actor in achieving the objectives set out in the Health Online action, for it is at this level that the key decisions on implementation of the information technology infrastructure in health care provision must be made. However, a European dimension to the challenge exists in the identification and dissemination of best practices and the joint development of relevant benchmarking criteria for eHealth.

Health Online: Five Target Actions

The Health Online action recognises that the first action towards exploitation of the power of information technologies in the health sector is the implementation of an infrastructure which will provide user-friendly, validated and interoperable systems for medical care, disease prevention, and health education through national and regional networks which connect citizens, practitioners and authorities online.

In order to assist Member States in reaching the stated target of ensuring that primary and secondary care providers have the necessary health informatics infrastructure in place, Health Online sets out four further actions:

• A set of quality criteria for health related websites has been adopted in a Communication of the European Commission on the basis of a workshop held in June 2001 and comments received on this site.
  The Communication "eEurope 2002: Quality Criteria for Health related Websites" is available in all 11 languages in PDF format:
  

   

• Best practices in eHealth will be identified and disseminated, in order to assist purchasing departments in decision-making.
  
• A series of data networks will be established to assist with informed healthcare planning in Member States within eEurope 2005.
  
• A communication on legal aspects of eHealth will be drafted which will clarify which existing legislation has an impact on eHealth in order to remove some of the uncertainties expressed by industry about the legal aspects of such commercial activities. An update is due during 2003.

This page was last updated on 27/01/2010.