Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

EU policy makers seek views on digital innovation in health and care

26 Jul 2017, 10:46 am

Health and care providers, insurers, technology companies and other stakeholders have been invited to highlight what the major barriers are to the accessing and sharing of health data electronically, and how they might be overcome.

The feedback has been requested by the European Commission as part of a consultation exercise that it plans to use to inform future steps to "promote digital innovation in health and care". The online survey is open until 12 October. The Commission said it expects to outline new policies on the topic before the end of the year.

The survey, which also looks at how personal data could be used to "advance health research, disease prevention, treatment and personalised medicine", has asked for stakeholders' views on the potential of high-performance computing, big data analytics and cloud computing to help advance such causes, as well as whether digital infrastructure could be developed to pool together health data and resources from across the EU.

In a joint statement, EU commissioners Andrus Ansip, Vytenis Andriukaitis, Mariya Gabriel and Carlos Moedas said: "We are dedicated to improving European citizens' quality of living by improving Europe's health, care and research systems by using digital technologies to their full potential. This consultation will help us identify ways to offer citizens, medical professionals and researchers better access to health data, prevention, rapid response to pandemic threats, personalised treatments and care."

"We are considering new digital initiatives to deliver on the free movement of patients and data, to support the modernisation of national health systems, and to bring together scattered evidence and innovative knowledge from across Europe. At the heart of our policies, citizens and their wellbeing are our first priority," they said.

The Commission had outlined its intention to boost digital health in its mid-term review of its 2015 digital single market strategy, published in May.

It said: "Digital innovation can offer cost-effective tools to support the transition from a hospital-based healthcare model to a person-centred and integrated model, improve health promotion, prevention and access to care, and contribute to the sustainability and resilience of healthcare systems. It can make effective the right for citizens to access their health data everywhere in Europe. It can help improve surveillance and early detection of infectious outbreaks. It can also drastically advance the diagnosis and treatment of patients."

The UK government recent endorsed new data security standards and protocols for giving patients more control over how their health data is used in England following two major reviews.