Imagining a citizen-centric health data ecosystem: A quick overview

Today, Europe’s healthcare systems are already seeing a massive shift in the debate about the use of digital technologies and data. Movement is taking place from discussions about patients’ own access to their health and care data towards a new focus on citizen’s control of a variety of forms of data. Many questions are pending about citizens’ capacity to share their data and what they may get in return. 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 from a European angle.

EHTEL’s 2021 Thought Leaders Symposium helped EHTEL members, friends, and the wider community to understand and potentially navigate and govern the future of European health data space, enable citizen-centric data sharing, and understand a variety of technical and societal developments. Key new trends in terms of digital health services and systems explored included medical devices, artificial intelligence (AI), and genomics.

This 2021 Symposium built on EHTEL’s associated journey towards Imagining 2029, and created synergies with the association’s 2021 four positions taken on the European Health Data Space.

Digital transformation is key. Each year of the upcoming period until 2030 incorporates potentially great changes in the health and care fields. In the surge to create citizen-centric health data ecosystems that are both caring and sharing, it is imperative to ensure that no-one gets left behind. “We should put patients and citizens at the heart of everything we do,” emphasised George Crooks of the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (Scotland), co-moderator of the Symposium.

🧘 Stay healthy while online!

EHTEL believes firmly in the importance of good health, self-management of health, and improving health – even while massive amounts of people’s work is now done online. Therefore, not only were plentiful breaks built into the Symposium, but also one of the breaks included a short online yoga session. EHTEL’s own Luc Nicolas led the way!

Key statistics

At EHTEL’s 2021 Thought Leaders’ Symposium, there were:

• Five sponsors and supporting partners.
  
• Four supporting EU co-financed projects: InteropEHRate, OPEN DEI, vCare, and Captain.
• Support given in creating sessions by EHTEL members like the Assuta Medical Centers, LindaCare, and MedCom.
• 32 speakers.
• 8 sessions, plus:

- A concluding summary on “What does a citizen-centric data ecosystem mean?”.

Sessions' summary

30 November 2021 | 14:00 - 17:30 

[1] Introduction: Citizen-centricity – going from digital to data

[2] Enabling citizens to be in better control of their data

Speakers:

[3] Creating better health through citizens’ generated data