It is vitally important that European Member States recover their resilience after a more than tough two years struggling with COVID-19, and now with several more crises on the horizon.
What is Europe’s Resilience and Recovery Facility: The European Resilience and Recovery Facility (RRF) is the centrepiece of Europe’s recovery plan – it covers a five-year period from 2021-2026, and focuses especially on the aftermath following the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. The European resilience and recovery plan aims to make Europe’s economies and societies more sustainable, resilient, and better prepared for the opportunities and challenges that underpin both the digital and green transitions. A total of more than 700 billion euros is being made available to Europe’s Member States through a mix of grants and loans. Current calculations show that around a quarter (25%) of RRF funding is being invested in digital health.
Each Member State is responsible for its own resilience and recovery plan – with its distinct targets and milestones. Each country makes a regular country report on its progress made (the next report is due in May 2022). Member States are encouraged to focus on areas in six pillars. Two of these pillars are: digital transformation, and health, economic, social and institutional resilience.
What countries has EHTEL worked with in 2021-2022: EHTEL has worked intensively with three countries during the 2019-2022 time-period. These were Czech Republic, Estonia, and Uzbekistan. In all three cases, the focus was on eHealth/digital health.
- In the Czech Republic, it supported the set-up and kick-off of a National eHealth Centre.
- In Estonia, it helped the Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia to define a new eHealth governance framework by holding a series of workshops and reports.
- In Uzbekistan, it helped to perform a peer review of the country’s digital health strategy.
A 2014 session in the Estonian Parliament introduced, through video, by the then President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
| If your country is in the process of redefining, recovering, or strengthening its health system, the EHTEL Match-making platform provides EHTEL Members with access to premium content. Examples include good practice reports and insights on what a range of countries are doing in terms of building their resilience through digital health. |
In offering its support, EHTEL has brought together a set of digital health experts from a wide variety of regions and countries. The regions/countries include Belgium, Catalonia, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Israel. For the Czech Republic and Estonia, the experts gathered together in order to assist the two countries in understanding what digital health options there are in Europe, and beyond. They showed how the two countries could draw independently on these options in order to influence their own strategic directions.
What services can EHTEL offer:
EHTEL can:
- Support Member States in the design, tendering, awarding and management of RRF-funded projects.
- Offer access to a solid range of experts who can provide guidance on implementation challenges either to Member States or tenderers.
For Member States especially, EHTEL’s technical assistance web-page lists six very precise ways in which EHTEL can help Member States, and regions, by drawing on skills from its expert network.