The SmartPersonalHealth project, launched on 1 January 2010, will raise awareness of the issues and challenges pertaining to interoperability among personal health systems, from technical, to organisational and legal aspects.

A plethora of devices and applications, some converging from the consumer electronics world, are coming onto the market and are being recommended by doctors and health insurers to help patients monitor their health and wellness. These tools, called 'Personal Health Systems' (PHS), are a key element of the growth of eHealth in Europe. Their full benefit can only be realised if they are interoperable - that is, if a device from one vendor works easily and seamlessly with other eHealth applications.

Noting the importance of this issue, the European Commission's Recommendation on Cross-border Interoperability of Electronic Health Records called for action to support a wider understanding of interoperability among key stakeholders. It has therefore funded a Support Action to promote interoperability among personal health systems and to other eHealth systems; the SmartPersonalHealth project will run for one year.

Key awareness raising activities of SmartPersonalHealth will include thematically focused events: three regional stakeholder workshops and one central pan-European PHS Interoperability Conference. Stakeholder groups including national health system representatives, practitioners, experts and users will be invited to present and discuss their experience, achievements and difficulties with a view to generating a debate on how to address current and future challenges.

Further networking and dialogue with healthcare providers, patients, industry, insurers and standards development organisations will be carried out. Contributions from the workshops and related networking will result in a report to the European Commission addressing the current status, and highlighting concerns, barriers and incentives to accelerate the development and adoption of interoperable personal health systems.

The SmartPersonalHealth project is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and is run by a list of partners.

 Further information:

• Original news article - eHealthNews.eu Portal
• SmartPersonalHealth Project
• European Commission recommendation on cross-border interoperability of electronic health record systems - ePractice library