The network of European state secretaries responsible for eHealth issues backed the Presidency’s proposal at the high-level meeting in Stockholm on 22–23 October. The participants demonstrated broad consensus over how the Member States should continue their work to realise the Council conclusions on eHealth that are expected to be adopted on 1 December this year.

The meeting more than lived up to expectations. The state secretaries and directors-general from the 25 attending Member States plus Norway, Switzerland and Turkey demonstrated their firm determination to strengthen and consolidate EU cooperation in accordance with the proposals that have been drawn up and that have found support during the autumn.

The Director-General of the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Policy, Pablo Rivero Corte, represented the next holder of the Presidency of the EU, and Sweden and Spain are now cooperating very closely on how to move forward with EU cooperation on eHealth.

“eHealth issues will be one of the top priority issues during the Spanish Presidency,” stated Mr Rivero Corte.

Melinda Medgyaszai, State Secretary at the Hungarian Ministry of Health, pointed out the importance of getting the support of the various professional groups within the health and medical care services.

“We mainly meet resistance there. We need to convince people and show in figures what the consequences will be if we don’t introduce eHealth to health and medical care services – how many people are given the wrong treatment unnecessarily, how much this can cost in terms of wrongly used resources and ineffective working methods and so on,” she said.

Ms Medgyaszai also stressed the importance of the most senior politicians realising the importance of investing in eHealth.

“We have to succeed in convincing prime ministers that they must make economic investments in this area even in times of crisis,” she added. With these words, she gave a good summary of the Swedish Presidency’s ambitions for eHealth cooperation, which focuses on these very issues.

The network of state secretaries and directors-general decided how the process is now to continue following the Council conclusions. The theme of the meeting was ‘European eHealth Governance’. This included producing a new European cooperation structure for the implementation of the Council conclusions, i.e. how the Member States are to translate words into action. The most tangible result from the meeting was that the countries have now agreed to enter into negotiations with the European Commission to create a Joint Action on eHealth, a special form of cooperation within the framework of the public health programme.

The Council conclusions are scheduled for adoption at the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council on 1 December. The conclusions are intended to put eHealth on the political agenda and highlight eHealth as a key enabler for various health reforms. They also highlight tangible areas for cooperation and the need for stronger governance and coordination of cooperation in this area. This is particularly important, as concrete cooperation on cross-border eHealth services – such as a European patient overview and the opportunity to send ePrescriptions across national borders – has already been initiated within the framework of the EU project epSOS.

The eHealth concept

The concept of eHealth includes all use of information and communication techno­logies (ICT) in the health and medical care sector. Examples include electronic health records, electronic prescriptions, digital imaging and health information directed at citizens via web portals. eHealth services facilitate the simple and secure exchange of essential health data between healthcare providers within and between countries. The services can also be used by countries wishing to exchange information electronically for research, follow-up or quality comparison purposes.