XpanDH is a CSA aiming at mobilizing and building capacity in individuals and organisations to create, adapt and explore purposeful use of interoperable digital health solutions based on a shared adoption of the European Electronic Health Records Exchange format (EEHRxF) across Europe. This pan-European effort will use a “network-of-networks” approach ensuring that digital health actors are motivated and supported by tailored guidance and real examples to help early adopters to advance to the concrete use of EEHRxF embedded digital health solutions to add value to health and care and promote Personal and European Health Data Spaces.

XpanDH pursues the main goal of maturing and accelerating a sustainable and scalable interoperability environment for digital health innovations based on the EEHRxF, around 5 Goals:

1) To develop robust technical specifications and resources for the EEHRxF building;

2) To establish the X-Bundle Readiness model;

3) To verify the usefulness of the X-Bundle in real-world with a set of early adopters grouped under selected adoption domains;

4) To mature a pan-European digital health ecosystem of solution providers and end-users,

5) To develop a framework for sustainable ecosystem.

The consortium will thrive on past and ongoing eHealth interoperability projects and services, and particularly on the X-eHealth and DigitalHealthEurope projects recommendations, through digital health data activism and strong patient engagement. It brings together 26 Digital Health Actors under a co-creation and co-implementation concept, supported by a Policy Board (linking to Governments and the eHealth Network). To expand its impact, 10 XpandDH networks of hundreds of health stakeholders will be nurtured to form a vibrant pan-European (Digital) Health space converging on common, usable, and reliable tools for real interoperable services that adoption of the EEHRxF and enhance healthcare cooperation for better health towards a European Health Union.

There is a need for compelling use cases for health data interoperability, showcasing the benefits health data standards bring, and demonstrating how much efficiency and good patient outcomes are lost without interoperability. Such interoperability tools include the EEHRxF. Its wide adoption, however, is not an easy task nor will it happen automatically due to many factors (e.g., legacy systems, non-interoperability supporting systems, local or national specifications,that would need to converge as well).

XpanDH will involve different stakeholders not just as opinion-providers but as active partners engaged in finding resources and with the will to create joint services based on the EEHRxF. This challenge will be addressed by the project through the XpanDH networks - X-Nets - networks of organisations directly or indirectly related to health and digital health and that will be involved or need to be involved in an expanding European Digital Health Ecosystem as it matures its use of the European EHRxF (e.g., Networks of Patients and Patient Associations, HCP, ISP, Standards Development Organisations and Industry).

● Research: (big data) Research, especially population research such as epidemiology, will thrive as more and more patient level data resources can become integrated, and robustly de-identified.

● Open science and citizen participation in S&T development is poorly researched, XpanDH will create tools and contexts for original research on how patients and professionals can act as digital health co-creators.

● Research communities: IT and IT adoption research communities will thrive on the existence of a new EU common context of health IT usage, assuming the EEHRxF, and its adoption, as an object of research in itself.

Expected societal impacts:

● Citizens (patients, carers, healthy persons) will benefit from safer, low error, higher quality and better evidence-based health care that is seamlessly delivered anywhere in Europe. We will include patients as information creators and empowered knowledge consumers.

● Health and care professionals: Care to patients will be better informed by access to more complete EHRs, and care decisions will be better supported by smart applications taking advantage of interoperability and realtime value from structured and coded information that has already been captured.

● HCP organisations critically rely upon high-quality, fine-grained, real-time patient information to optimise service delivery, detect risk situations, monitor quality and outcomes. They will probably gain the fastest benefits realisation from interoperable services.

● Health authorities, healthcare payers: EU Organisations that pay for or commission health services today lack fine-grained patient level data to monitor outcomes. We envisage patient-sensitive outcomes-based reimbursements, and the ability for payers to accurately compare performance, outcomes and safety.

● MS will benefit from better information to support strategic decisions, which maximise the efficiency and safety of health services they govern, reducing direct or indirect costs through payer organisations.

● Environmental impacts: EHRxF wider adoption may reduce the need for large amounts of paper print-outs (e.g. laboratory results or hospital discharge reports), particularly as often patients are given these forms of health data supports as no other forms of communication with HCP exist (especially in Cross-border contexts).

Economic impacts:

● Health / ICT Industry: Better defined interoperability services, backed by harmonised assets, will lower the cost of standards adoption and of opening up standardised interfaces to a plug and play market. Interoperable component-based health ICT architectures and products are vital to stimulate the market, stimulate competitiveness, and enable innovation especially amongst SMEs. This is also essential in new ICT areas (e.g., personalised care, personal health systems and wellness), which have so far proved sluggish despite huge potential.

● SDOs: Standards will be more richly used, and many more will be needed. SDOs will demonstrate why standards need financial investment to improve productivity and quality, and how they can provide better support to standards adopters. SDOs will have greater clarity in how to work better together and produce better harmonised standards.

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With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.