Collaborating for Digital Health and Care in Europe

Warm up for the 2023 Symposium with a few videos!

European Health Data Space: Putting plans into practice

Europe’s healthcare systems are experiencing a massive shift in the use of digital technologies and data. Moving from a simple focus on patients’ own access to their health and care data , activities are now concentrating on citizen’s control of a health data, and beyond. There are many questions pending about citizens’ opportunities to share their data and how this data-sharing may develop to help society as a whole. On the horizon are many new data services and novel sources of data. The challenge is how to govern and regulate these world-changing developments, using a uniquely European approach.  

How to put plans into practice? In 2022, Europe has moved from having the political ambition of a European Health Data Space to making a concrete proposal  for a Regulation. More clarity will come in 2023. Challenges remain, however, on how to implement the data space in the future.  

EHTEL’s 2022 Thought Leaders Symposium helped EHTEL members, friends, and the wider community to understand, navigate, and govern the potential future European health data space; enable citizen-centric data sharing; and understand a variety of developments, including activities that incorporate social, societal, policy, organisational, technical and semantic moves. Key new trends in digital health services and systems that were explored focused chiefly on artificial intelligence (AI)  as well as apps, mobile health, electronic health records, ePrescribing/eDispensing, and big data.  

This 2022 Symposium built on EHTEL’s annual work programme towards Imagining 2029 . It created synergies with the association’s 2022 activities on the European Health Data Space, manifest throughout the year of 2022 in its two work themes: an Innovation Track and a Transformation Track. 

Core topics covered in the  two-afternoon Symposium included:  

• The electronic health record challenges when making real world data available for both primary and secondary use; 
• mHealth to enable the right of citizens to have easy, no-cost access to their own health data which can be shared as they wish; 
• The building blocks needed to facilitate cooperation on the use and re-use of real world data; 
• The societal data culture, and interoperability governance, needed to make the data space work well. 

🗣️  Meet-up for networking discussions with EHTEL members 

EHTEL organised a special set of discussion tables, available only to its members, at the start of the second afternoon of the Symposium. Three EHTEL members offered to lead discussions. The conversations took place around hospitals’ focus on secondary use of healthcare data; data messaging; and the training needed to undertake digital transformation in health and care.  

🧘 Stay healthy while online! 

EHTEL believes firmly in the importance of good health, self-management of health, and improving health – especially since large volumes of people’s work have been done online in 2022. Several healthy breaks were built into the Symposium. Two  of those breaks included online yoga sessions. EHTEL Secretariat member, Luc Nicolas , showed the audiences how! 

Key statistics 

At EHTEL’s 2022 Thought Leaders’ Symposium, there were: 

• 7 sessions and 1 members-only conversation session 
• Five sponsors and supporting partners. 
• Two supporting EU co-financed projects: UNICOM, OPEN DEI. 
• 27 speakers. 

📝 To know more about the programme, the participants, and speakers, visit the Symposium programme page.   

Sessions' summary

Day 1 | 28 November 2022

[1] Keynote Speech: Citizens’ rights of access and transmission of personal health data: Implementation models and approaches