Support to a Digital Health and Care Innovation initiative in the context of Digital Single Market strategy

The Communication on the mid-term review of the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy (COM(2017)228) identified three priorities on digital transformation of health and care (DTHC): citizens' access to their data; data infrastructure; interaction between citizens and healthcare providers for better health management. That document indicated that specific measures would be elaborated in a dedicated Communication to be adopted in the months to follow.

Progressing significantly at EU scale on the referred priorities requires aligning the efforts of many relevant players across Europe, namely their efforts on research and innovation, in line with activities supported by H2020, as well as efforts on deployment, political coordination, stakeholder awareness and mobilisation, etc. Such coordinated European action on is already supported through various frameworks including the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA), the eHealth network of Member State representatives, the eHealth stakeholders group, the health and care activities under the Digitising European Industry platform and other. It is also the focus of actions under European programs including H2020 (notably its societal challenge 1), the Active and Assisted Living Joint Programme, the IMI and ECSEL Joint Undertakings and the Knowledge and Innovation Community on Health from the European Institute of Technology.

Scope

The action should address the activities indicated below, in close coordination with European Commission services, while considering the coordination activities and programs mentioned above, relevant projects and actions supported by the EU, and other relevant initiatives.

1) Delivery on the third DTHC priority of the DSM (focusing on user-centred integrated care), which should represent approximately 75% of the total effort of the action. This will concentrate on supporting and extrapolating the lessons from practical experiences across Europe that are particularly impactful, successful and replicable. The focus will be on large scale deployment of digital solutions for chronic diseases and integrated care (that absorb the majority of healthcare budgets and where there is a big scope for improvement) and patient-centred care, considering a limited set of implementation scenarios which seem particularly impactful. The experiences to be considered may cover public and non-public initiatives, including from the reference sites and other participants of the EIP on AHA, as well as relevant European projects (finished or not) on integrated care. Three tasks will be undertaken:

1.1. Support the identified initiatives and projects, assessing their impact, analysing their strengths and weaknesses, and providing advice for further deployment, including on available funding from public (EU or other) and private sources as well as other types of assistance. In all cases, and notably for EU funding and assistance, the aim should be to maximise their leverage effect and demonstrable impact.

1.2. Replicate the lessons from the selected initiatives and projects, through a common framework for assessing impact (with particular consideration to the MAFEIP), twinning activities, and collaboration actions between relevant initiatives and stakeholders. The later may include a variety of instruments including pre-commercial and innovation procurement. Success and failure factors will be analysed and compared in view to assess their potential replicability. This work should build on the H2020 support action funded under SC1-HCO-17-2017, and any other relevant efforts to link initiatives in the scope of the third DTHC priority of the DSM.

1.3. Scale up the deployment across Europe of DTHC solutions, analysing, elaborating on and promoting enabling factors and "building blocks", which may lead to European reference frameworks. These may relate e.g. to mHealth, smart homes, smart hospitals, legislation and practices on data management, recognition of professions and professional acts, reimbursement schemes, health technology assessment, incentive and penalty schemes, performance and outcome-based approaches, subsidy schemes, interoperability and standards, skills and literacy measures, etc. This work will build up on the scale-up strategy of the EIP on AHA and any other efforts to scale at European level initiatives in the scope of the third DTHC priority of the DSM.

2) Collaboration platforms on key aspects of the three DTHC priorities of the DSM, which should represent approximately 20% of the total effort of the action. This requires to identify relevant stakeholders and initiatives across Europe and engage them to collaborate, jointly analyse key challenges and solutions, elaborate common strategic agendas and commitments for action in three areas:

2.1. Citizens' access and management of data relevant to their health and wellbeing (first DTHC priority). This will address public and private initiatives allowing active citizen involvement with regard to data relevant to their health (access, manage, sharing, donating, etc). It will be important to reach out to relevant stakeholders, e.g. health authorities, patient and healthcare provider associations, data protection authorities, data platforms, etc. Account should be taken of schemes to share data, including across borders, such as the health Digital Service Infrastructure under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), and other relevant ongoing projects and actions funded by the EU (e.g. topic SC1-DTH-08-2018).

2.2. Aggregated demand for infrastructure capacity to handle health data (capture, transfer, process, store, etc) by researchers, developers of products and services and other players involved in the secondary use of data (second DTHC priority). The focus will be on the interaction between the referred demand and the supply for generic data infrastructure capacity, considering in particular the initiatives on EuroHPC (high performance computing), European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as well as future related activities supported by the H2020 and the (CEF) programs. Special attention should be paid to security, privacy and identification aspects. Account should be also taken of the most relevant ongoing projects and actions funded by the EU (under H2020, CEF, structural funds, etc) focusing on health data.

2.3. Interaction between citizens and healthcare providers (third DTHC priority), including feedback from patients and on health outcomes, exploitation of real world data, and other aspects meant to improve quality of care and health management in general. This will refer to various initiatives already existing in this area.

3) Vision of EU coordination and support on DTHC beyond 2020, which should represent approximately 5% of the total effort of the action. Considering inputs gathered through the implementation of the two other work packages and additional feedback from relevant stakeholders, advise on future EU support on DTHC goals, including possible financial support under the next Multi-annual Financial Framework (e.g. support for research and innovation, cohesion, strategic investment), as well as legislative, policy, or other types of intervention.

The proposal should include partners with demonstrated experience of delivering on the areas mentioned above, who are widely acknowledged for their expertise and results, while providing a broad representation of constituencies relevant to DTHC, as well as of regions across Europe.

Beyond the profile and credentials of their partners, the proposal should demonstrate capacity to reach out to and effectively engage relevant stakeholders across Europe, influence their policies and practices as well as stimulate cooperation amongst them.

Moreover, the proposal should be able to credibly deliver on the expected impacts identified below. This will require relevant expertise on a variety of domains and an appropriate level of resources convincingly allocated to the action.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU up to 4 M€ over two years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact

The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:

• Effective support to and engagement of stakeholders active on the third DTHC priority of the DSM, resulting in tangible impact from the beginning of the action and sustainably throughout its duration.
• Functional collaboration platforms on key aspects of the three DTHC priorities of the DSM and instrumental contribution to the implementation of EU policy on DTHC in the context of the DSM.
• Actionable strategic vision for EU policy on DTHC beyond 2020, including appropriate mobilisation of EU instruments.

Cross-cutting Priorities

• Open Innovation
• Socio-economic science and humanities