Reports and Studies about eHealth

This meeting of the eHealth Network held in Bucharest on 11-12 June led to important decisions: Malta, Portugal and Estonia received the green light to launch their first digital cross border services for the exchange of health data, and Member States adopted “investment guidelines” to orient public and private actors towards funding and purchasing choices that foster interoperable digital health, using standards and profiles in the Electronic Health Record Exchange Format.

What have the best brains of Europe come up with to improve health, wellbeing and ageing with the help of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)? This report offers an overview of the most current European funded projects in this field.

SPHINX is an Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation funded project that organized its first Workshop on “Cybersecurity situation awareness for health organizations - CYBERSEC4HEALTH” on July 10th 2019 in Brussels.

The Human Brain Project is featured in the "How the digital revolution is transforming EU-funded brain research" brochure published by CORDIS, the service disseminating the results of projects funded by the EU's framework programmes for research and innovation.

According to a new study, eHealth adoption in primary healthcare in the EU has increased from 2013 to 2018, but there are large differences between the countries surveyed. Compared to 2013, the group of General Practitioners (GPs) who are enthusiastic about eHealth has doubled.

Training in digital knowledge and skills should become a new core component of training for future and current doctors in all Member States: this was agreed by representatives of students/junior doctors and deans, gathered at the initiative of the European Commission and Erasmus University Medical Center on 12 April in Rotterdam. A set of recommendations for action were developed at this meeting, and participants committed themselves to taking them forward in their own national context to raise policy makers’ awareness.

The European Commission has published a 'Study on Safety of non-embedded software; Service, data access, and legal issues of advanced robots, autonomous, connected, and Artificial Intelligence based vehicles and systems'. The study sheds light in particular on the effects of digital Apps on health.

Following an open selection process, the Commission appointed 23 experts to an Expert Group on Business-to-Government Data Sharing.

The European Commission launched a few new Horizon prizes. Each prize has an ambitious goal to solve a major challenge facing society, without detailing how this should be achieved or who should achieve it. One of them rewards those who can come up with an early-warning system for epidemics. Another one is about Distibuted Ledger Technology such as the one used in blockchain, to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact solutions to social challenges.

There are many stereotypes and preconceptions about artificial intelligence, fuelled in no small part by science fiction books and films. But in reality AI should be considered as a tool, albeit a highly sophisticated one that is constantly evolving and improving as our human intelligence deepens. As the EU launches its coordinated plan on artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of this key technology for the benefit of all, we take a look at how AI is in fact already very much a part of our day-to-day lives.