e-Health governance bodies, such as IDIKA and NeHA, non-profit organisations, such as HL7 Europe, HL7 Hellas, IHE catalyst, IHE Europe as well as several European projects (Xt-EHR, xShare, xPandH, Unicom, Gravitate Health, Label2Enable, ManaGiDiTH, CY-EHDS-2ND, etc) are brought together in one venue to interconnect, share outcomes and discuss further steps towards adopting and implementing digital technology in healthcare in Europe.
IDIKA S.A. (e-Government Center for Social Security Services) is the leading governmental organization in Greece, acting as the National Contact Point for eHealth (NCPeH) for all EU and cross border activities in Greece, for both primary and secondary use of health data. IDIKA is also the Operator of Governmental Cloud eHealth infrastructure that runs most of operational eHealth systems such as the National ePrescription, the myHealth app, patient registries, the national electronic health record and many more to come. IDIKA will be the custodian of the necessary digital healthcare transformation ecosystem necessary to transform healthcare with the support of modern and innovative digital tools.
NeHA (National e-Health Authority (NeHA) of Cyprus) is a legal person of public service established by Cyprus law. NeHA is thus, the National eHealth Competence Authority for digital healthcare in Cyprus and the eHealth (NCPeH) for all cross-border activities in Cyprus, for both primary and secondary use of health data. NeHA is an institution already compliant in many respects with the upcoming new European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation. NeHA is responsible for the building, and operating the system which will implement the national electronic health record of the citizen which will be owned by the citizen and become transparent to all healthcare providers. NeHA is the coordinator of the EU joint action Xt-EHR, which has undertaken the implementation of the EHDS regulation for primary use of health data.
HL7 Hellas as a non-profit Organization was established with the sole purpose of promoting communication standards within the Greek territory and in the countries of Southeast Europe. HL7 Hellas is the non-profit affiliate of HL7 International, an organization that aims to spread reliable standards for healthcare data exchange. It helps the management and integration of data related to patient clinical care as well as the evaluation and further development of the HL7 standard protocols.
HL7 Hellas encourages the creation of flexible standards, guidelines, methodologies, and protocols. It also helps with any other related services and products, based on those of the International Organisation. Finally, it aims to continuously research for further development related to the improvement of the standards.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), through its Medical Physics and Digital Innovation Lab, plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of healthcare education by actively participating in the development of the managiDiTH master’s programme. AUTH is a key contributor within the multinational consortium committed to creating an innovative master’s degree curriculum. This collaborative effort involves four esteemed European universities, uniting to address the dynamic changes in the health sector.
CDISC creates clarity in clinical research by bringing together a global community of experts to develop and advance data standards of the highest quality. Together, we enable the accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of data for more meaningful and efficient research that has greater impact on global health.
CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, is an association that brings together the National Standardization Bodies of 34 European countries.
CEN provides a platform for the development of European Standards and other technical documents in relation to various kinds of products, materials, services, and processes.
CEN supports standardization activities in relation to a wide range of fields and sectors including air and space, chemicals, construction, consumer products, defense and security, energy, the environment, food and feed, health and safety, healthcare, ICT, machinery, materials, pressure equipment, services, smart living, transport and packaging.
The European Federation for Medical Informatics was founded in 1976 and its objectives were: to advance international co-operation and dissemination of information in Medical Informatics on a European basis; to promote high standards in the application of medical informatics; to promote research and development in medical informatics; to encourage high standards in education in medical informatics; to function as the autonomous European Regional Council of IMIA. All European countries are entitled to be represented in EFMI by a suitable Medical Informatics Society. The term medical informatics is used to include the whole spectrum of Health-/Socialcare Informatics, and all disciplines concerned with Health-/Socialcare and Informatics.
European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network is a not-for-profit organization financed through subscription fees. Its members are healthcare and counter fraud organizations in Europe. EHFCN was founded in 2005, its mission, is dedicated to combating fraud, corruption and waste in the healthcare sector across Europe, and to improve healthcare systems for the benefit of every patient. EHFCN vision is to create a real fraud-proof and corruption-proof culture within healthcare systems across Europe. Its network will empower people to use their knowledge and skills to the full.
The European Public Health Association, or EUPHA, is an umbrella organisation for public health associations and institutes in Europe. EUPHA was founded in 1992 by 15 members (12 countries). EUPHA now has 83 members from 47 countries: 45 national associations of public health; 28 institutional members; 7 individual members; 2 global members.
EUPHA is an international, multidisciplinary, scientific organisation. Our network brings together over 32,000 public health professionals.
Consumers, patients, business partners and regulators are demanding more and better product data than ever before—but complex and costly data exchange processes are producing a surge in low-quality data.
GS1 empowers industry’s digital transformation by enabling businesses to create a digital version of a product that is as good as the physical one. Ultimately, consumers and patients will benefit from increased product transparency and the seamless experiences that this brings.
The Hellenic Digital Health Cluster -HDHC- was founded in March 2021 and is based in Athens, Greece. It is a dynamic initiative of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) that aims to include Greece among the leading countries in the field of digital health internationally.
The HDHC ecosystem includes 30 innovative and dynamic companies of the digital health ecosystem in Greece and internationally, as well as FORTH.
HL7 Europe (nonprofit foundation, est. 2010) addresses European standardization requirements in digital health along with 22 European HL7 Affiliates. HL7 Europe is active in European Commission digital health policy i.e., eHealth Stakeholder Group, health platform, CEN and EFMI engaging in development of HL7 FHIR Implementation Guides within EC-funded projects, supporting European-wide and global standards alignment. HL7 Europe contributes to adoption, education, and capacity-building initiatives across technical, semantic, and organizational interoperability. myHealth@EU uses HL7 CDA in patient summaries and ePrescriptions services. Future myHealth@EU services will use HL7 FHIR to access health data in EHDS unlocking innovation potential, improving quality and safety.
The HL7 standard defines all types of data in all healthcare domains and healthcare sectors. The standard is developed and managed by the international HL7 organization, which is active in more than 30 countries, in the Netherlands by the HL7 Netherlands Foundation. The mission of HL7 Netherlands is to provide standards, based on the international HL7 specifications, that enable interoperability of health data within the Netherlands.
Our goal is that the right information, necessary for providing the right care in the right place, is available at the right time by increasing the adoption of the international HL7 FHIR standard in the Netherlands in the coming years.
HTAi is a professional society with an international community of members including academics, public & private organizations, health professionals, students, patients, and citizens. HTAi’s members are dedicated to shaping the future of health systems and improving health outcomes for all people.
Through scientific development, advocacy, member events, capacity building, and networking, HTAi creates a neutral platform for all those with an interest in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) to facilitate global collaboration, strategic discussions and knowledge mobilization that will accelerate innovation and impact in HTA around the world.
Human Health Intelligence is an organization dedicated to the development of frameworks and methodologies that facilitate the incorporation of advanced technologies and scientific innovations, aiming to improve the transformation and optimization of healthcare services.
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively.
In Europe, IHE activities are supported by IHE-Europe, a non-profit organisation that promotes the IHE concepts in Europe, encourages the setting up of IHE Deployment Committees at national level, and organises, together with the national deployment committees, testing activities like the yearly IHE EU Connectathon.
IHE Catalyst is a non-profit organisation set to accelerate deployment and adoption of IHE to deliver interoperability quality in Health, adding additional value to the IHE Ecosystem.
It has collected the heredity of IHE-Services in offering professional services to support IHE Members as well as national/regional authorities, local projects or any other organisations deploying IHE profiles for their e-health projects. IHE Catalyst is built upon a long experience in interoperability testing management and now provides the answer from IHE International to support Confidence about rigor testing, quality control testing provides the backbone for QUALITY in products and in deployments.
The Joint Initiative Council for Global Health Informatics Standardization (JIC) is formed to further the important role of health informatics standards to: 1) Enable interoperability of information and processes across health domains; 2) Support the timely, efficient delivery of safe, coordinated, accountable, high-quality health services to individuals, communities and populations; 3) Facilitate effective global markets for health information systems.
Thirteen standards development organizations are members of the JIC currently chaired by Dan Vreeman of HL7 International. The members are: CDISC, CEN TC251, DICOM, GS1, HL7 International, ICCBBA, IEEE SA, IHE International, ISO TC215, ITU-T SG16, LOINC, OECD (Observer Member) and SNOMED International.
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LOINC is the international standard for identifying health measurements, observations, and documents.
Reference labs, healthcare providers, government agencies, insurance companies, software and device manufacturers, researchers, and consumers from around the globe use LOINC to identify data and move it seamlessly between systems.
Better health through better information. The Dutch knowledge organization for digital information provision in healthcare. Nictiz ensures that healthcare information can be clearly recorded and exchanged. Because data availability in healthcare is essential for improving people’s health. We not only look at the Netherlands, but also at what is happening internationally. Collaboration is crucial for good information provision. We have a large national and international network of healthcare organizations, umbrella organizations, ICT suppliers and policy makers. We are happy to use this to help you with your issue. In this way we work together towards better health through better information.
The European Digital Innovation Hub for Smart Health: Precision Medicine and Innovative E-health Services (smartHEALTH) is a one-stop-shop where SMEs, startups, mid-caps, and the public sector can get help to improve business & production processes and products & services by means of digital technology. Our hub offers highly specialized expertise in the flagship areas of precision medicine, cancer, medical image analysis, public sector digital transformation and infrastructure. This expertise is established through R&D excellence at national and international level. smartHEALTH brings together all the main R&I leaders of the Greek ecosystem in the field of digital and smart health to facilitate the digital transformation of the private and public sector.
SNOMED International is a not-for-profit organization that owns, administers and develops SNOMED CT, the world’s most comprehensive clinical terminology. We play an essential role in improving the health of humankind by determining standards for a codified language that represents groups of clinical terms.
SNOMED International strives to determine the best global standards for health terminologies and to engage with the global healthcare community to improve SNOMED CT to better serve the clinical information needs of a diverse range of health care stakeholders.
The University of Thessaly (UTH), through its Intelligent Systems Laboratory (iSL), a research laboratory of the Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, is playing an important role in shaping the future of digital healthcare by actively participating in the development of various digital health projects, including UNICOM, XpandH and the Greek National Telemedicine Network.
Vulcan is an HL7 Accelerator connecting clinical care and clinical research through FHIR.
Vulcan works to close the gap between clinical care and clinical research to improve patient lives, decrease costs and improve efficiency. Also, Vulcan coordinates strategy between stakeholders and leverage existing work within HL7 and other groups including FDA, HL7, NCATS, NLM, Danish Medicines Agency, SCDM, TransCelerate Bio Pharma, and others.
This Joint Action (JA), ‘Strengthening e-Health including tele-medicine and remote monitoring for health care systems for CANcer prevention and care (eCAN)’ aims to bring the benefits of e-Health to all citizens and patients across EU Member States, focusing on cancer prevention and care.
eCAN explores their role in two clinical trials, focusing on tele-rehabilitation and tele-psychological support in different populations of cancer patients in 10 European countries.
Patient Reported Outcomes and Experiences shall be monitored by dedicated tele-monitoring systems, and a secure platform will provide dashboards for decision support enabling future Artificial Intelligence applications.
xShare envisions everyone sharing their health data in EEHRxF with a click-of-a-button. The xShare button to be featured across health portals and patient apps and allow people to exercise their data portability rights under GDPR. Hence, the European EHRxF will be the driver for research and innovation in EHDS. xShare will establish the European EHRxF Standards and Policy Hub, the “Hub” partnership of six standards developing organizations (CEN/TC251, HL7 Europe, IHE Europe, SNOMED, CDISC, IEEE) market actors (DIGITAL Europe, MedTech-Europe and EUCROF), supported by competence centers, nationals and regional authorities and European SMEs.
XpanDH project supports an expanding ecosystem of individuals and organizations that are developing, experimenting, and adopting the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF) providing a crucial contribution to the European Health Data Space. It is a 2-year Coordination and Support Action financed by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.
Gravitate-Health is a public – private partnership with 40 members from Europe and the US, co-led by University of Oslo and Pfizer, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a joint undertaking of the European Commission, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), IMI2 Associated Partners.
The project’s mission is to equip and empower citizens with digital information tools that make them confident, active, and responsive in their patient journey, specifically encouraging safe use of medicines for better health outcomes and quality of life.
Label2Enable is an EU-funded project. Our task is to promote the adoption of CEN-ISO/TS 82304-2 and its quality label for health and wellness apps. Our aim is a digital single market in which quality health apps are used at scale in prevention, health care and self-care. The project consists of seven Work Packages (WPs). The project consists of three pillars: Trust, Use and Adoption.
ManagiDiTH is a European Union funded project on developing a Joint Master’s programme on “Managing Digital Transformation in the Health Sector” with the aim of creating a new master’s degree curriculum that equips healthcare professionals with the competencies needed to develop digital services in the health sector. ManagiDiTH’s mission is to advance digital health education and contribute to the implementation of the European Health Data Space. AUTH’s active involvement underscores its dedication to driving innovation and excellence in healthcare education within the European landscape.
The OneAquaHealth project aims to improve stainability and integrity of urban freshwater ecosystems by investigating the interconnection of ecosystem health and human wellbeing. The identification of early warning indicators aspires to enhance environmental monitoring with AI-assisted tools to support decision-makers. In this way, adequate and timely decisions towards effective measures will help restore the health of aquatic ecosystems and promote OneHealth.
This innovation action will give a powerful impulse to implementation of ISO IDMP (ID of Medicinal Products) standards in EU Member States drug databases, supporting safe cross-border ePrescription/eDispensation and effective pharmacovigilance.
Once EU-interoperable data on medicines taken by patients become available, further benefits will accrue through better health data for improved clinical decision support, patient empowerment, public health and clinical research. New opportunities will arise for pharma industry, software developers, SMEs providing smart apps and others, thereby fostering their innovation capacity and competitiveness.
After 10 years of development, the IDMP suite of standards is ready for implementation. Though some isolated implementation work has started, the time is now ripe for a more concerted effort towards large-scale implementation, contributing to this global interoperability endeavour and delivering benefits to EU citizens.
Athens Digital Health Week 2024 – ADHW
We invite you to participate in the Athens Digital Health Week 2024, during the week of 15-19 January 2024, to feature your work, network with like-minded people and get a better insight into what is progressing in Europe and beyond in digital health!
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