Collaborating for Digital Health and Care in Europe

What is EHTEL doing in 2023?

In 2023, with its emphasis on facilitating knowledge and developing new knowledge, EHTEL’s Imagining 2029 edition was structured in two tracks. The two tracks were: the European Health Data Space, and Hybrid Models of Care. They build on earlier work developed by EHTEL.

Each Imagining 2029 track had a specific orientation and was intended to attract different audiences.

EHTEL was also present at, and involved in, a number of important events and conferences.

The first in a series of conferences was the Radical Health Festival Helsinki, which included twosessions with Imagining 2029 themes and an EHTEL master class.

What's in it for me?

Both tracks built on EHTEL’s multistakeholder platform approach: they brought together the richness and variety of EHTEL’s membership and stakeholder communities. Webinars engaged attendees: speakers and discussants were invited, and the audience members got involved in conversations and polls.

Our 2023 story: These two tracks created an interdependent flow – both themes of healthcare governance and implementation are related. Value comes from both, and each theme feeds into the other.

The European Health Data Space starts from data, whereas hybrid care begins with services. The need for more integrated services (e.g., bringing health and care together) acts as a trigger to provide and demand higher quality services and data that is coded (meta-data). The availability of data offers the opportunity to develop new use cases and new services

In terms of the resulting policies and technologies used to ensure people’s satisfaction with health and care – that can be called blended care – both technical and organisational aspects are needed.

European Health Data Space

This track focused on:

• Governance processes for health data ecosystems Potential examples to be covered involve work on the governance of assets and outcomes/results and appropriate management of medications.
• mHealth, based on article 3 of the proposed Data Space, will include topics related to access, control, and sharing of people’s own data.

Hybrid models of care

This track had three parts. It was oriented towards:

• Upscaling digital health services. Its work was on collaboration between demand, supply, demand enabler, innovation, and capacity building. Themes were linked to the work of DigitalHealthUptake and the European health and care cluster.
• Digital skills for the workforce. Here, the focus was on the work of a multi-stakeholder partnership launched under the EC Pact for Skills in order to re-skill and upskill members of the healthcare workforce. The theme was aligned with the work of BeWell.
• Digital health for Active and Healthy Living. Here, the main content was 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.

EHTEL’s masterclass contribution to Radical Health Festival Helsinki included a hybrid models of care theme, and the radical changes needed by health and care systems, workforces, and citizens. People joined EHTEL there on 12-14 June 2023.

Webinars

Digital solutions – what does it mean and cost to be inclusive? Lessons learned from three Large-Scale Pilots

Date: 24 February 2023

You have an adopted mHealth solution – how did you succeed?

Date: 12 April 2023

Trends in local markets track

EHTEL has launched a new series of webinars in 2023. It focuses on what's trending today and what are the hot topics for EHTEL's own members. 

These were webinars tailored to the needs of EHTEL members and prospective members. They were geared towards offering local insights into local markets and local trends in EHTEL members’ countries and regions. They are intended to attract match-making - between health care authorities and health and care providers - and to bring together the demand side and supply side of the market.

The track builds on previous editions of Imagining 2029, especially the work of “Digital transformation” in 2022. Transformation focused on knowledge sharing among EHTEL members. It looked at cross-border integrated medication records, the exchange and sharing of health data standards, and the governance of health data. It examined health and care organisations today, and how they can transform themselves in the future. 

This new "trends in local markets" track started to run in autumn 2023. The first two webinars were from EHTEL members in Scotland and Denmark.  

All emerging presentations and video recordings were shared with EHTEL members and special invitees. Later in 2024, they have been shared with the whole EHTEL community.

Webinars 

Being green: EHTEL’s green approach to meeting organisation in 2023 continued. The focus was on holding virtual meetings or in-person meetings with remote access rather than reverting to full-scale physical meetings.