e-Health for Patients Empowerment in Europe
José Luis Monteagudo Peña, Oscar Moreno GilThe content of this monograph is the result of tasks performed in the context of the eHealth ERA project funded under the EC Information Technologies for Health activities of the EU Sixth Framework Programme. This monograph reviews the state of eHealth applications serving to enhance the role of the patients in the healthcare context. The study has been based on a quite broad collection of practical implementations across Europe.
This document presents preliminary outcomes of an ongoing study entitled "ICT & Ageing - Users, Markets and Technologies". This two year research endeavour was launched in the beginning of 2008 by the European Commission, DG Information Society and Media. The general background to this study derives from the trend towards accelerating population ageing as it has been observed across Europe and beyond for some time already. 
For the last two decades the European Commission (EC), and in particular the Directorate General Information Society and Media, has been strongly supporting the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in healthcare. ICT is an enabling technology which can provide various solutions in the healthcare sector, ranging from electronic patient records and health information networks to intelligent prosthetics and robotised surgery. 
This new study about ICT standards in the health sector by empirica provides a structured overview of eHealth standards development and uptake in a European context, paying special attention to standards for electronic health records. The study was commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate General Enterprise and Industry and explores the current status of ICT health standardisation processes and their future potential. Key findings include the following: 
Edited by Kevin Dean