The “Communication on a lead market initiative for Europe” COM(2007) 860 final, identified the need to improve the process of procurement of eHealth solutions by promoting networking and cooperation among public procurers in the development process of new solutions.
It has therefore been decided to fund the creation of a broad community of procurers (i.e. healthcare providers, private entities, hospital managers), responsible for procurement and implementation of eHealth services.

Funding: up to 500K EUR

Expected outcomes:

- Provide a forum to exchange good practices for deploying sustainable innovative eHealth services, including procurement strategies, specifications and contract management;
- Create synergies to increase quality and interoperability of deployed solutions as well as the negotiation power of procurers versus vendors and/or developers of eHealth tools ;
- Support the sharing at European level, of technical knowledge and expertise needed to deploy innovative eHealth tools and services;
- Produce a tool kit for healthcare providers on how to deploy innovative eHealth tools and services, in a sustainable manner.

Target: procurers both from public and private sectors, in particular on regional and local levels (including hospitals and or healthcare centres)

The focus should be on gathering and sharing experiences on how to overcome barriers to wider deployment in a sustainable manner.

Special attention should be paid to:
- Protection of personal data
- Interoperability
- Use of existing standards

For details, see: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm