On May 10-12, speakers and delegates from around Europe and the world met in Malta for eHealth Week 2017. The theme for 2017’s conference was “Data for Health”, particularly focussed on personalised, sustainable care.
Data lies at the heart of service delivery and the development of effective health policy. During eHealth Week, speakers and delegates will explore the changing ways in which personal health data is created, stored, shared and used. Advances in bioinformatics support a paradigm shift towards tailor-made prevention and treatment strategies both for individuals and population groups. Opportunities are growing for ICT to support patient-centred health services and the involvement of patients in their own care, including access to personal health data, sharing of data, and mHealth applications.
Big Data Europe was invited to present a partner session alongside the main conference tracks, to demonstrate the progress we have made in Societal Challenge 1 (Health, Well-being and Demographic Change). Around 35 delegates joined us to learn about the Big Data Europe platform, and particularly our pilot project in SC1, the Open PHACTS Discovery Platform.
The audience was particularly interested in the challenges of extending a platform like Open PHACTS to personal health data. Time and again, stakeholders at our workshops have noted that there is incredible potential for personalised health based on big data solutions – but working with personal health data would also bring serious concerns around privacy and ethics.
You can read more about eHealth Week 2017 in the conference report, and find the slides from our partner presentation on our Slideshare account.