EXPAND
Expanding Health Data Interoperability Services is a thematic network that aims at achieving an environment of sustainable cross-border eHealth services.
At the European level, it is established by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), and at the national level through the deployment of suitable national infrastructures and services.
EXPAND is supporting both the eHealth network subgroups consolidating required information and assets (legal, organisational, semantic and technical) and the Member States by establishing a cooperation platform towards the upkeep of cross-border health services.
Co-funded by the European Commission Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) within the ICT Policy Support Programme, EXPAND started its activities in January 2014 and finished them at the end of 2015.
16 EU Member States, plus Switzerland, were represented in the thematic network and 24 beneficiaries are actively collaborating to achieve EXPAND key results.
In summary, EXPAND is expected to:
- Maintain and further develop interoperability assets which have a European scope.
- Integrate any relevant recommendations and decisions taken by the eHealth network and report on the deliverables of EXPAND.
- Foresee a proper handover strategy to the CEF.
- Bring together a wide range of relevant stakeholders with expertise in the development, implementation, assessment, maintenance, dissemination and use of the elements of an EU-wide infrastructure.
Additionally, EXPAND aims at securing the epSOS pilot services or similar services from other mature pilot projects. IHE provided facilities to organise an EXPANDATHON in December 2015 in Lisbon.
Project reference: http://www.expandproject.eu/
ANTILOPE
ANTILOPE recommendations, guidelines and results were agreed upon at the January 2015 Handover Workshop in Ghent by stakeholders including the European Commission, vendor associations such as COCIR, expert partners – including IHE-Europe – and several national eHealth competence centres. They comprise the refined eHealth European Interoperability Framework (eEIF) that includes 27 identified IHE Profiles for public procurement; the quality system testing based on an overview of ISO standards and test methods (tools and test scripts) that includes the IHE Gazelle tools; the European Conformity Assessment scheme based on ISO/IEC 17025 standards and HITCH recommendations. IHE-Europe played a leading role in this initiative that collected input from 10 ANTILOPE summits across the 28 EU Member States in 2014 and involved key national and international organisations working together to accelerate deployment quality of standards and Profiles for eHealth interoperability. IHE-Europe is fully engaged in aligning its strategy to the ANTILOPE recommendations. The Refined eHealth European Interoperability Framework was endorsed by the eHealth network in November 2015 for the methodology and tools supporting the description of use cases. The list of use cases and realisation scenarios were extended by the eStandards project. The use case repository is available at https://usecase-repository.ihe-europe.net
Status: closed (January 2015)
Project reference: www.antilope-project.eu
epSOS
epSOS focuses on exchanging medical data between European countries for citizens abroad in a secure environment. epSOS specifies and develops an infrastructure based on eHealth services that were tested in practise during a pilot scheme. 22 European countries were actively participating to set up a cross-border infrastructure. The services within scope are:
- Patient summary allowing the access of the medical data from the patient’s home country when receiving treatment abroad.
- ePrescription and eDispensation services.
IHE coordinated the industry team including voluntary companies that contributed to the epSOS services specifications. IHE-Europe plays a unique role as epSOS representative of 31 industrial partners. IHE contributed to the testing strategy and developed the epSOS testbed and, as a third party, tested the evaluation of the epSOS infrastructure of each participating nation. IHE-Europe supported epSOS in organising a “Connectathon for this Project”, hence epSOS “Projectathon” that was first held in November 2010 in Bratislava and was also organised as a parallel event during the IHE-European Connectathons over Europe.
Current status: closed (June 2014)
Project reference: www.epsos.eu
Trillium Bridge
The Trillium Bridge support action extended the European Patient Summaries and Meaningful Use II, Transitions of Care in the United States to establish an interoperability bridge that will benefit EU and US citizens alike, advancing eHealth innovation and contributing to the triple win: quality care, sustainability and economic growth. IHE-Europe developed the testing strategy for Trillium Bridge aligned with the epSOS testing strategy. IHE-Europe organised the Trillium Bridge Projectathon with three European Member States in Luxembourg in April 2015. The use cases based on patients travelling from Europe to the US or from the US to Europe were the main drivers of the project to cover patient and mediated exchange of patient summaries and were tested during the Trillium Bridge Projectathon.
Status: closed (June 2015)
Project reference: www.trilliumbridge.eu
eHGI
eHGI is a strong coordination of Member States and stakeholders in order to promote interoperable and sustainable implementation across Europe and to operate with the eHealth network that was created through Article 14 of the Cross-Border Directive 2011/24/EU. The eHealth governance Initiative established a governance structure for eHealth within Europe in order to ensure continuity of healthcare both at home and across borders and achieved recommendations and guidelines designed to deliver eHealth in Europe in a coordinated way. IHE-Europe provided expertise in eHealth interoperability including IHE Profiles and test methods as well as testing and certification processes.
Status: closed (June 2015)
Project reference: www.ehgi.eu
HITCH
The Healthcare Interoperability Testing and Conformance Harmonisation project concluded its 18-month study in 2013 with important recommendations to the EU Commission on how to proceed with eHealth interoperability testing and certification/labelling in Europe. In the area of testing, HITCH stressed the need to continue and amplify the progress accomplished in the last few years, with initiatives such as IHE Connectathons. HITCH identified two areas that need further improvement and more formality. First, there is a need for a widely accepted quality guide for interoperability testing based on existing quality standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC17025). Second, an organised collaboration is needed to reduce the fragmentation and lack of maturity in interoperability test tools and test plans in specific areas as IHE is developing.
Please also take a look at an interview with Mr. Charles Parisot about the project. https://youtu.be/x47GA9S8JBI
Smart Personal Health (SPH)
The goal of the Smart Personal Health initiative is to raise awareness of the need for and benefits of interoperable eHealth systems, in particular Personal Health Systems (PHS). IHE-Europe provided expertise in eHealth interoperability that supported the definition of the concepts, roadmaps and recommendations as a result of the SPH project. During the dissemination workshops in 2011, IHE-Europe provided education sessions that were knowledgeable.
eHealth Interop (M/403)
"eHealth Interop", also called Mandate 403 addresses the requirements of the European Commission mandate to the European Standards Organisations (ESOs) on standardisation in the field of eHealth. This mandate (M/403) aims at providing a consistent set of standards to address the needs of this rapidly evolving field for the benefit of future healthcare provision. With eHealth Interop, the European Commission and governments recognise that the barrier to interoperability is not a question of creating more standards for IT. Rather, it is necessary to reach agreement on the existing standards that should be adopted to ensure interoperability between health IT systems. With strong experience in integrating existing standards for specific Use Profiles, IHE has made a solid contribution to this pan-European effort. The implementation of the recommended eHealth interoperability process would result in a set of Profiles easier to adopt in various eHealth projects across Europe. It may also include the definition and development of testing tools and the organisation of testing events similar to the IHE-Europe Connectathon. The eHealth Interop Report organised interoperability activities on five processes that would accelerate a European-wide coordinated interoperability standards adoption in eHealth:
- Use case definition and prioritisation.
- Standards development.
- Profile development and maintenance.
- Profile quality assurance test plans and tools.
- Sharing of best practices in deploying eHealth projects.
The final report to M/403 Phase 1 has been approved by the three European Standardisation Organisations and the European Commission in 2009.
Project reference: www.ehealth-interop.eu
Calliope
The CALLIOPE network was part of the Open eHealth Initiative, which was driven by Member States health administrations. It was initiated by stakeholders representing 17 health authorities and 10 organisations and associations representing networks of physicians, community pharmacists, patients, industry and health insurers. It represented a targeted effort aiming at establishing an appropriately governed, composed and structured open forum, with the focal goal to support Member States in implementing interoperable eHealth solutions in close collaboration with key stakeholders, including users, industry and payers. CALLIOPE served a first set of operational objectives, i.e. elaboration of a common interoperability roadmap, review and advancement of the EU interoperability recommendation and facilitation of pre-standardisation processes through liaison with Standard Development Bodies (SDOs). IHE contributed to the results with its expertise in interoperability, Profiles-based standards and testing processes.
Project reference: http://www.calliope-network.eu
Renewing Health
Renewing Health aims at implementing large‐scale, real-life testbeds for the validation and subsequent evaluation of innovative telemedicine services using a patient‐centred approach and a common rigorous assessment methodology. In nine of the most advanced regions belonging to nine different European States (i.e. Regione Veneto (Italy), Region Syddanmark (Denmark - Coordinator), Northern Norway Regional Health Authority (Norway), South Karelia Social and Health Care District (Finland), County Council of Norrbotten (Sweden), Catalunya (Spain), Region of Central Greece, Carinthia (Austria) and Land of Berlin (Germany), service solutions were already operational at a local level for the remote monitoring and the treatment of chronic patients suffering from diabetes, COPD or cardiovascular diseases. As a member of the Advisory Board, IHE-Europe assisted with the technical architecture of services and standards towards which the different regional implementations needed to converge to ensure openness and scalability of the solution.
Project reference: http://www.renewinghealth.eu/en/home