The eHealth Governance Initiative (eHGI) worked to establish a governance structure for eHealth in Europe in order to ensure continuity of healthcare both at home and across borders. It achieved this through the development of strategies, priorities, recommendations, and guidelines designed to deliver eHealth in Europe in a co-ordinated way.
The work involved all stakeholders, but especially patients and healthcare professionals. The Initiative sought a strong coordinated political leadership and the integration of eHealth into national health policies.
It accomplished this through its links to the Article 14 eHealth Network that brings together national authorities responsible for eHealth on a voluntary basis to work on common orientations in this area and to promote an interoperable and sustainable eHealth implementation across Europe.
The eHealth Network was established by Article 14(2) of Directive 2011/24/EU. In order to achieve coordination, coherence, and consistency, and to avoid duplication, it was considered desirable that the eHealth Governance Initiative should operate within the framework of the Network and the objectives assigned to it.
EHTEL - in collaboration with its EHTEL/ELO network of leading eHealth competence centres in Europe - contributed to the Work Package 8 on Interoperability, Standards and Market (ISM) as well as - in collaboration with its patients' stakeholder group - to Work Package 6 – on Trust and Acceptance.
Furthermore, EHTEL contributed to the dissemination aspects of the eHGI and liaison with other European projects like SUSTAINS. Finally, EHTEL provided editorial and content management support to the eHGI website.
The Joint Action e-Health Governance Initiative JA-EHGov (SEHGovIA) received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Health Programme. The SEHGovIA project was a Thematic Network and was partially funded by the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme (CIP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
This project received EU funding.