BRUSSELS – A new report by SmartPersonalHealth reveals that interoperability is a significant challenge for the personal health solutions market. The report, titled “Enabling smart integrated care: Recommendations for fostering greater interoperability of personal health systems,” offers ideas for creating interoperable personal health systems.

Devices and applications that enable patients to become more engaged in their own care and help improve quality of life are considered part of the personal health solutions market. These solutions are beginning to emerge in the European eHealth space, and are considered a vital part of the evolution of eHealth.

The report calls on consumers of personal health solutions to help encourage interoperability among devices.

“The project partners share the belief that if Europe wants to reap the full benefit of personal health systems, health stakeholders must understand the benefits of interoperability, and be empowered to demand those systems from vendors,” said Veli Stroetmann, Empirica researcher.

Among SmartPersonalHealth’s recommendations are:

• Establish equal standing for guidelines and standards developed by private consortia and by official governing bodies
• Create public/private partnerships for education and training in the implementation of personal health systems
• Offer financial incentives to reward the implementation of interoperable solutions
• Form legal empowerment for procurers of interoperable solutions to put interoperability requirements in their tenders

Benoit Abeloos, Project Officer in the ICT for Health unit of DG Information Society, concluded: “We appreciate the good work from the consortium and will take their recommendations into consideration as we look at fostering interoperability of personal health systems in line with the Digital Agenda for Europe.”

Click here to view the report.