Preparation for Europe’s next Multiannual Financial Framework is well underway. It presents a distinct opportunity to embed health into Europe’s economic, digital, environmental, and security agendas. To explore this challenge, the CARE Summit 2025 on collaborative action for the reframing of European health took place in Brussels on 3-4 December 2025.
The CARE Summit explored health as a strategic foundation for Europe’s competitiveness, security, and social cohesion. It brought together representatives from many different stakeholder types over its two days who examined health as a cross-cutting enabler of resilience and innovation.
Organised by the European Health Management Association (EHMA), the summit was held in cooperation with several other European organisations. EHTEL’s General Secretary, Marc Lange, attended and contributed.
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Marc Lange was invited to contribute to the CARE Summit 2025 in a plenary session on a particularly strategic topic, Health data as a catalyst for policy and innovation. Starting from the European Health Data Space (EHDS), he made a plea for the need for data to be captured at the point of care, and in a semantic interoperability fashion, so as to enable innovators to be able to rely on these data in order to develop added-value services for people. He commented that semantic interoperability shouldn’t solely rely on clinicians: indeed, clinicians should be provided with the necessary tools that work both seamlessly and in the background. |
The Summit produced a Roadmap for a stronger European Health Union. The roadmap has three chief themes: crisis preparedness, One Health – the approach to unify and integrate the health of people, animals, and ecosystems – and the European Health Data Space (EHDS). Its 17 pages provide actionable pathways for the decade ahead. Summit attendees endorsed the roadmap’s content.
Source: “Roadmap for a Stronger European Health Union” - EHMA, 2025
What does the Roadmap suggest on the EHDS?
The Roadmap suggests cross-sector strategies to address uneven readiness for the EHDS. It offers insights into establishing national governance and transformation capacities for EHDS implementation.
The Roadmap proposes the designation of National EHDS Transformation Centres under already-existing digital health authorities in Ministries of Health.
Based on the need for clear, coordination mechanisms, it suggests:
- Decision-making based around a RACI model/matrix (on responsible, accountable, consulted, informed stakeholder decision-making).
- National mapping exercises which work on identifying coding systems, data formats, and regional disparities in digital maturity.
- Harmonisation of coding based on ICD-11 the most recent International Classification of Diseases developed by the World Health Organization.
- Establishment of national mapping libraries.
Successful roll-out of the EHDS could be based on two further activities to:
- Strengthen transparency and trust in the EHDS.
- Testing phased implementation of the EHDS.
How to handle strengthening transparency and trust in the EHDS?
Reinforcement of public confidence is key to effective implementation of the EHDS.
National digital health authorities should in turn work with regional health authorities on coordinating and implementing a multi-channel communication programme on:
- A public EHDS information portal.
- Interactive dashboards.
- Demonstrations using synthetic data and privacy-preserving computation tools.
- Standardised templates explaining consent.
- The conduct of surveys.
- Publication of annual transparency reports.
How to test phased implementation of the EHDS?
Overall, European Union-level governance bodies should provide guidance, coordination of standards, and facilitate peer learning.
In concrete terms, at national, regional, and local levels:
- Ministries of Health and digital authorities should lead on a structured implementation strategy.
- Regional authorities should coordinate expansion of roll-out, e.g., learning from pilot initiatives on workflows and protocols.
- Local-level hospitals, clinics, and IT teams should focus on testing, data transformation, and reporting.
- Data stewards and clinical coders should ensure adherence to coding standards and should maintain data quality.
- A focus on learning could include hands-on training for frontline IT staff members and the security of testing environments. Dedicated resources emphasised as needed for such learning/training included staff time, training modules, and coordination platforms.
What observations can EHTEL now make?
Indeed, EHTEL now makes the following observations:
- Xt-EHR has proposed approaches for compliance testing and certifications.
- A Support Centre has been contracted by the European Commission to provide tools for self-testing compliance with the European Electronic Health Record exchange Format (EEHRxF) specifications (these tools are still in preparation at the time of writing).
- ESHIA (the European Standards for Health Interoperability Alliance) has been established to facilitate collaboration between EEHRxF implementers and standards development organisations to ease implementation.
- The i2X project is developing live demonstrators for EEHRxF implementation.
How to create a robust foundation for the EHDS: What’s in it for you?
Overall, the ultimate aim of the Summit and its roadmap was to create a robust foundation for full-scale EHDS adoption.
To go further:
- Read the Roadmap yourself!
- Keep updated on the Multiannual Financial Framework.
- Continue to follow what EHTEL has to say about the EHDS when you:
- Read the association’s three working papers.
- Attend, as an EHTEL member, the association’s upcoming EHDS Implementers’ Task Force three-a-year meetings.
- Learn about ESHIA and its work programme.
