Expanding the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format to Improve Interoperability Within the European Health Data Space

This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination 6 “Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry”. More specifically, this topic aims at supporting activities that are contributing to the following impact area: “High quality digital services for all.” To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed, tailored towards and contributing to all of the following expected outcomes, and provide appropriate qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure their progress and specific impact:

• European Health Record (EHR) stakeholders (e.g. developers, suppliers, integrators, and operators) have at their disposal and use fit-for-purpose standards, guidelines, and toolsets for prioritised health information domains to address interoperability of EHRs in line with the principles set in the EEHRxF Recommendation^[1], contributing also to security and privacy.
• Stakeholders have at their disposal better quality and better integrated health datasets within the European Health Data Space,^[2] to foster innovations in the health sector and leverage the potential of new analytics solutions such as AI and big data, get new insights and detect trends from aggregated data, including for cross-border health threats.
• Citizens are provided with an expanded access to their health data, also across borders, and innovative digital services for high-quality health and care across the EU.

EHR interoperability has yet to become a reality in a number of use cases and health information domains. It is a complex, multi-dimensional challenge. EHRs across the Member States are diverse; so are languages, cultures, and practices in the health sector. Different technical specifications, technologies and clinical terminologies are used, involving a range of stakeholders, within and across care settings.

Proposals should address all of the following:

• Research, develop and validate harmonised interoperability formats for sharing data in specific priority health information domains that should be selected with reference to the EU policies and priorities. The output formats should enable EHR interoperability across the Member States and address cross-border health data exchange by design and in line with the principles set in the EEHRxF Recommendation.
• Leverage and scale up the potential of EHR through enhanced interoperability to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of patient care, enforce patients' right to data portability, enhance care coordination, guide crisis planning, reduce medical errors, and lower costs. For example, based on the lessons learnt from COVID-19, enable incorporating EHR data into the early stages of clinical crisis planning and leveraging it to identify potential cross-border health threats based on analysis of patients’ data trends.
• Address semantic interoperability for prioritised information domains so that the transmitted health record contains standardised coded data.
• Maximise synergies with relevant initiatives, activities and programmes, building upon previous and linking to on-going actions^[3].
• Closely coordinate and collaborate with various stakeholders, from patients and healthcare professionals to EHR providers, healthcare industry (including SMEs), policymakers and legislators to progress towards a more comprehensive EHR interoperability.

Applicants envisaging to include clinical studies should provide details of their clinical studies in the dedicated annex using the template provided in the submission system. See definition of clinical studies in the introduction to this work programme part.

[1] Commission Recommendation on a European Electronic Health Record exchange Format (EEHRxF) (C(219)800)

[2]https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth-digital-health-and-care/european-health-data-space_en

[3]Such as “Support for European eHealth Interoperability roadmap for deployment” 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/sc1-hcc-07-2020;

“Prototyping a European interoperable Electronic Health Record (EHR) exchange” 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/sc1-dth-08-2018;

“Setting up a European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF) Ecosystem” 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-hlth-2022-ind-13-05