PCP - eHealth innovation in empowering the patient

: Actions that focus on enabling the transition to new services or better integration of existing services through appropriate ICT based technologies using relevant elements e.g. proof of concept, user acceptance, use of the service, training of the professionals including online courses/forums that bring professionals and patients together, trust and security and consent of the patient. These strategies should allow communication to happen by increasing the level of interactions between the patient and the health professionals or informal carers, sharing of data and enabling the users to stay in control of their health condition and to adhere to prescribed medical plans and contribute to increasing the effectiveness of interventions. Examples of services could contain but not limited to:

i) telemedicine services to follow patients e.g. with chronic or rare diseases after hospital discharge, and to interact with patients, carers and health professionals;

ii) e-mental health for patient empowerment with self-management tools and blended care; and

iii) domestic rehabilitation (both physical and cognitive) procedures under remote professional supervision.

Proposals should aim to develop a common language between patient and health care professionals, increase patient health and IT literacy, and foster individual patient empowerment giving the patient tools to take major life decisions and actively participate on the treatment and recovery from the disease. ICT solution should address relevant ethics and gender aspects and should also address related regulatory questions such as ownership of data, data protection/privacy and consumer protection. Open innovation with patients or/and informal carers could be included as an integral part of the concept.

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

Empowering the hospitalised patients, outpatients and their families/carers to support a continuum of care across a range of services can relieve the pressure on governments to provide more cost-effective healthcare systems by improving utilisation of healthcare and health outcomes. The support for patients should be understood broadly covering a continuum of care in hospital, in outpatient care, and integration back to working life. For example rare diseases are particularly difficult to manage far from specialised centres. The eHealth action plan 2012-2020[[http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/ehealth-action-plan-2012-2020-innovative-healthcare-21st-century]] and the outcome of the mHealth Green paper[[http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/public-consultation-green-paper-mobile-health]]pave the way towards empowerment of the patient with the assistance of ICT.

• Improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare systems by challenging industry from the demand side to develop innovative solutions that: increase the role and the responsibility of the patient, support self-management; reduce the number of severe episodes and complications; enhance the ICT skills and increase adherence of patients and care givers; strengthen the evidence base on health outcomes and management of comorbidities; increase the information about disease progression with advanced diagnostic techniques; provide early and predictive data about patient disease; reduce the number of unproductive visits to the hospital; and implement intensive rehabilitation programs at home when appropriate
• Reduced fragmentation of demand for innovative solutions to facilitate PCPs of expected minimum value of EUR 3 million by leveraging resources, encouraging among others also synergies with Structural Funds
• Increase the opportunities for solution uptake across wider international procurement markets by aiming at interoperable solutions that are validated through field testing by participating procurers in multiple countries across Europe and contribution to standardisation where relevant
• Equal access rights to the results generated by the PCP for all procurers jointly undertaken a PCP aiming for a fair and transparent level playing field for modernizing public services