eHealth Week 2016

eHealth Week 2016 is organised by the Dutch Ministry of Health, the European Commission and HIMSS Europe. This year’s educational programme will focus on three main themes: Empowering People, Trust & Standards and Innovation & Transition.

eHealth policies are changing. Until now, policies have mainly focused on institutions and IT systems: today, that focus is shifting and is now being placed on eHealth users. The people who are using eHealth are becoming increasingly involved in the discussion and being placed at the heart of eHealth policy-making.

The Netherlands is one of the most digitally mature countries in Europe and is home to one of the three HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7 hospitals in Europe as well as having eight Stage 6 hospitals: it is an ideal place for the European eHealth Community to come together!

About the themes

Theme one: Empowering People

This theme is about self-empowering eHealth for patients and healthy citizens. The goal of the theme is to find out what the needs are of patients and healthy citizens if they want to be more active in managing their own health. This theme also explores how elderly people can continue to live independently and how eHealth applications can better meet the needs of users.

Theme two: Trusts & Standards

Proper legal frameworks are a precondition for healthcare providers, enterprises and member states to be able to exchange data. Legal clarity is also necessary to ensure trust among the public in eHealth solutions and applications. Proper standards and technical solutions are needed to make systems interoperable and connect the different actors. The objective of the theme is to exchange knowledge on how to promote and enhance trust in health IT systems and how to increase the use of standards in eHealth.

Theme three: Social Innovation & Transition

Often, much emphasis is placed on the technical aspects of eHealth. However, scaling up eHealth also requires a different mindset on cooperation, organisational and cultural innovation - organising healthcare in a smarter, more efficient and effective way. In this theme, the social aspects of implementation and innovation are key. What is needed - in addition to technical innovation - to ensure that user-centric eHealth solutions are deployed on a large scale? This theme will stimulate implementation, scale and use of eHealth and discuss where, why and how implementation and upscaling has been successfully achieved and how best practices can be replicated.

How to protect your privacy while using mHealth apps

A Code of Conduct can helpApp developers are often small companies or individuals and may lack the legal expertise to take complex data protection rules into account and apply them to their mobile health apps. This coincides with the current lack of trust by citizens in these apps as demonstrated by the results of the European Commission's mHealth Green Paper consultation and other studies.

In order to improve this situation and to help app developers comply with data protection principles, one year ago, the European Commission, together with the industry, launched the development of a Privacy Code of Conduct for mHealth apps. This initiative will be discussed in a dedicated session of the second theme, "Trust & Standards", where representatives from different sectors will address the latest draft of the Code of Conduct and next steps.

Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head of Unit Health and Well-Being at DG Connect at the European Commission, said: "I am happy that this initiative moved forward so rapidly and I hope that it can soon be presented to the Article 29 Working Party, the independent European working group on data protection. Once approved by them and applied in practice, I believe the Code of Conduct will be a great step towards increased trust in mHealth apps."

The added value of Personal Health Records

In one of the sessions connected to the "Empowerment of the People" theme, experts will discuss the added value of Personal Health Records and how their use can be integrated and implemented on all levels. For patients with health information and data in multiple places it is difficult to keep track of their medical records. With the use of Personal Health Records patients can collect, track and share information about their health. Improving the ‘information’ position of the patient is a precondition to achieve empowerment and self-management.

"The conversation about Personal Health Records comes at an important time in Europe, where it is common for patients to travel within the continent on a regular basis. How are we all expected to keep track of our records? Can we find common ground? This session will address important eHealth aspects which affect all stakeholders alike and promises to be extremely insightful", said Christina Roosen, Vice President of Public Affairs at HIMSS Europe.

Ethical aspects of eHealth: do we pay enough attention to the human aspect?

Also featuring in the programme, will be a discussion around the critical technical breakthroughs that are leading to humans to be increasingly replaced by machines, technologies and robots. Replacing human contact and how to deal with these issues when scaling up new initiatives will be the point of focus during one of the sessions connected to the theme "Social innovations & Transitions". Experts will share opinions and develop practical guidelines for practical initiatives.