How do you imagine health and care in 2029 in an era of digital transformation?
| EHTEL is working towards imagining the future of health and care systems in 2029. The initiative is based on active input from all the members of EHTEL's ecosystem. It also includes plenty of exciting advances from the European Union-supported projects in which the association participates. |
EHTEL imagines a positive, digital future in which all citizens will have better access to their health data, care data, and health, healthcare and care services thanks to digital tools and mobile apps. Health systems as a whole will benefit from a future in which health and care professionals from many different sectors, including the hospital and home, work closely together with citizens – using digital technologies. A more synchronised use of data will also improve the response of governments to health and care challenges, and will benefit the growth of European businesses and industries.
One example of the way this ecosystem can work together is the collaboration implicit in the OPEN DEI health and care cluster.
What is EHTEL doing in 2023?
European Health Data Space
This track will focus on:
- Governance processes for health data ecosystems. It will include items like how to govern, what to govern, and what policies and principles.
- A focus on mHealth, based on article 3 of the proposed data space. It will include materials related to access, control and sharing of one’s own data.
Hybrid models of care
This track will have three parts. It is oriented towards:
- Upscaling digital health services. Its work will be on collaboration between demand, supply, demand enabler and innovation sides; and capacity building.
- Digital skills for the workforce. Here, the focus is on a multi-stakeholder partnership launched under the EC Pact for Skills for the re-skilling and upskilling of members of the healthcare workforce.
- Digital health for Active and Healthy Living. Here, the main content will be on strategies for inclusive usability of digital solutions (e.g., diversified user interfaces, use cases and operating environments), and various hybrid models of care, including virtual coaching.
The big picture is the Common European Data Space
Europe is planning a European Data Space. Up to nine sectoral data spaces contribute to the space as a whole, including skills: health is a key data space. It is the first space on which Europe is focusing.
Upcoming in 2023 among the health data space initiatives will be technological shifts towards edge computing, cloud infrastructure and services, high-performance computing, “AI on demand”, and artificial intelligence (AI) testing and experimentation facilities.
Many of EHTEL’s past and present Imagining 2029 activities, including videos, position papers and factsheets, have already concentrated on the importance of data, data sharing, and the European Health Data Space. EHTEL’s collaborations with important European projects and thought leader organisations have been key to these developments.
Looking forward to 2029 and a digital future for health and care
Two years have already passed since EHTEL started the Imagining 2029 initiative.
2021 showed how technologies are influencing the way health and care are organised and used. The disruption implicit in the 2019-2020 COVID-19 outbreak worsened many health and care challenges . The disruption forcefully affected the way people live. It changed the daily routines of each and every one of us, disrupting our social and working lives, and offering us opportunities to get more involved in health and social care management and provision, including self-care.
2022 was impacted by yet other societal and economic crises – polycrises. Nevertheless, the Imagining 2029 focus encouraged a more in-depth look at two themes, innovation and transformation. These two complementary themes showed absolute inter-dependence. Among the topics into which EHTEL took a deep-dive were:
- Innovation: architecture; data sharing; data governance; and, especially, interoperability.
- Transformation: digital health governance; health data standards; and medication management were all topics that corresponded to the ecosystem’s need for knowledge-sharing.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, EHTEL operated in this new era of digital health and care as a large-scale collaboration. In the years to come, EHTEL will continue to work with its members, helping you to join forces to propose and implement new solutions, make progress, and confront the serious challenges we all face in health and care.
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To take a look back in time at EHTEL’s heritage of work on developing future components of digital health, discover the EHTEL 20th Anniversary page.