Enabling Smart Integrated Care: Recommendations for Fostering Greater Interoperability of Personal Health Systems

The final goal of promoting interoperability in general, and for Personal Health Systems (PHS) in particular, is to contribute to integrated care. This will be supported through comprehensive, easy and collaborative access to and sharing of a patient's health data for all authorised health professionals, family carers and ultimately the patient itself. Thus they will gain managed access to essential health information about patients, subject to the patients' consent.

The overriding goal of the European Commission (EC) co-funded project SmartPersonalHealth is to promote a greater understanding of the value of interoperability among Personal Health Systems and between them and other eHealth systems, in the landscape of continuity of integrated care, and across multi-cultural environments in Europe. This publication explores key concepts in PHS interoperability, summarises related EU policy developments, synthesises discussions with stakeholders, and sets out recommendations to the European Commission, national governments, stakeholder groups, and industry for fostering greater interoperability of PHS. The focus of these recommendations is on raising awareness with different stakeholders about the needs for and benefits from interoperability, the value of building up a body of knowledge and collecting evidence as well as the need for collaboration and exchange of good practice.

These recommendations for fostering greater interoperability of personal health systems are derived from three stakeholder consultation workshops and the final conference of SmartPersonalHealth as well as from various informal discussions with stakeholder groups. The final conference was held as a satellite event to the Continua Health Alliance European Symposium 2011 on 17th January 2011 in Brussels.