eHealth: International coordination blocked for Switzerland
eHealth Suisse has been pursuing eHealth activities at the European level for many years. So far, it has been actively involved in various projects. Now, however, the EU Commission has announced that Switzerland may no longer participate in the European eHealth coordination bodies.
The EU excludes Switzerland from the European eHealth coordination. The reason given for this is the directive on cross-border healthcare that has been in force in the EU since 2013. This gives patients the right to be treated by a healthcare professional anywhere in the EU and to have the costs reimbursed. Because the European eHealth coordination is attached to this directive and Switzerland has not adopted it, cooperation is no longer possible, the EU Commission announced.
The Confederation and eHealth Suisse have taken note of the decision and are now examining how to proceed.
This concerns the participation in "eHealth Action" and the "Connecting Europe Facility" programme. See individual projects in the following overview:
eHealth Network
The "eHealth Network"is the central strategic decision-making body of the European Union (EU). It defines a common vision and develops non-binding guidelines. So far, the "eHealth Network" has developed guidelines on the topics of Patient Summary, ePrescription and National Contact Points (NCP, gateway for cross-border data exchange).
The "eHealth Action" prepares the technical documents for the "eHealth Network".
Connecting Europe Facility programmes
The Connecting Europe Facility programme (CEF) is a comprehensive infrastructure programme in the area of the EU's digital economy. It runs from 2014 to 2020 and the EU is investing €7.5 million in eHealth. With this, it wants to establish a so-called "Digital Service Infrastructure" in Europe. On the basis of uniform infrastructure components (e.g. so-called "National Contact Points"), the EU wants to enable cross-border electronic data exchange (Cross-Border eHealth Information Services CBeHIS).
In the epSOS and EXPAND projects (see below), such a national contact point for Switzerland was established in Geneva on a pilot basis. eHealth Suisse is working together with the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and the Geneva project partners towards the permanent establishment of the national contact point according to Federal law on the electronic patient file (EPDG) towards.
Other International Activities:
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE Switzerland and IHE Europe) is an initiative of healthcare professionals and industry. The aim is to improve the exchange of health information between different computer systems.
Completed eHealth projects with the EU:
EXPAND
The EU launched the Expanding Health Data Interoperability Services (EXPAND) project in order to preserve the lessons learned from the epSOS project. EXPAND ran from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2015 with the aim of,
- maintain and expand the infrastructure (National Contact Point) and the applications operated under epSOS;
- to bridge the period until the entry into force of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme.
Switzerland participated in the EXPAND project from October 2014 as part of a cooperation between eHealth Suisse, the University Hospital of Geneva (Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève HUG) and the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland Geneva HES-SO. Thanks to the participation in EXPAND, the Geneva National Contact Point established in the epSOS project can continue to operate professionally under the responsibility of the Canton of Geneva.
epSOS
The epSOS project officially came to an end at the end of June 2014. The eHealth project, launched in 2008, brought together a large number of European countries in a practice-oriented collaboration. The range of services developed will continue to be offered in Switzerland even after the epSOS project has come to an end. Switzerland's participation in the epSOS project between 2011 and mid-2014 with the pilot application at the University Hospital of Geneva (Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève HUG) has been made possible by the support of the Canton of Geneva, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), eHealth Suisse and the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland Geneva HES-SO. Since July 2014, the Swiss epSOS services have continued under the responsibility of the Canton of Geneva. The HUG does not offer all the services offered by epSOS, but focuses on providing other participating regions with access to the so-called "Patient Summary" of the patients of the HUG.
The HUG see an important "lesson learned" in the importance and complexity of semantic coding of medical information. For its part, the evaluation of the "readiness" area of the Swiss epSOS pilot application by eHealth Suisse shows that interoperability in the broader sense is feasible, despite different national starting conditions. Furthermore, the evaluation results confirm that the selection of open standards by eHealth Suisse (e.g. IHE, CDA, HL7, Snomed) is the right strategy.
CALLIOPE
The Call for Interoperability (Calliope) project started in July 2008 and lasted until the end of 2011. Twenty-two EU and EFTA countries were represented. Switzerland was a member of the project from February 2009. The primary aim of Calliope was information networking (function as a platform).
For further developments on eHealth implementation in Switzerland, see:
