The institution selected by ITU and WHO as the Host and Implementer of the Hub was the Andalusian Public Health System (SSPA), with the support of 15 partners from 12 different countries. The Hub was formally established on February 2020. The official launch of the Hub was at ITU HQ in Geneva on February 18th with participation of WHO HQ & Digital Health Department, the Delegation of Andalusian Regional Minister of Health and Families, representative of the Delegation of the European Union to the UN, the Hub Consortium partners and members of Missions of Spain, Italy and Austria to UN.
The Hub Consortium partners had a first face-to-face Workshop on 17-19 February 2020 to kick off its activities and to start the actual implementation and operationalization of the Hub. The Hub online platform mhealth-hub.org was also launched in February 2020. It contains a COVID-19 apps Hub repository with more than 80 apps from public and private initiatives, a comprehensive list of health apps repositories in Europe and a repository of assessment frameworks.
In the two years period following the kick off meeting in February 2020 the Hub produced 11 public deliverables disseminated through the Hub website
•D2.1 Knowledge Tool 1: Health apps assessment frameworks
•D2.2 Knowledge Tool 2: An intervention-specific mHealth programme
•D2.3 Knowledge Tool 3: Integrating innovations into healthcare systems
•D3.3 Hub establishment report
•D4.4 Report on lessons learnt
•D4.5 Service Portfolio for sustainability
•D4.6 Report on performed countries support process
•D4.7 Hub Ethics Report 1: Ethical and Legal Aspects of the mHealth Hub
•D4.8 Hub Ethics Report 2: Ethical issues in mHealth Service Provision
•D4.9 Hub Ethics Report 3. Ethical Lessons learned – a deep dive in mHealth for diabetes
•D5.1 Document contributing to the Policy Framework for EU on Cross-Border Adoption and Assessment of Innovations
They contain guidance and recommendations to different stakeholders on how to plan large-scale mHealth programmes with a focus on the non-communicable diseases (NCD) prevention and management. Continuous feedback collected from different Customer Segments during the duration of the project motivated the development of KTs.
The Hub did not only analyse different needs and expectations of the different stakeholders in the entire ecosystem but also make them working together in a complementary way.
As such the deliverables were conceived in an interdependent way in order to produce a comprehensive mHealth package that can be tailored and adapted to particular needs of institutions or countries.
The high number of case studies and countries/regions that were investigated and analysed in the process of creating these deliverables stand proof for relevance of their content and representative coverage of European digital health landscape.
The deliverables were promoted during 46 events between Nov 2019 to Feb 2022:
•9 Hub Talks organized by the Hub Consortium
•4 country workshops (3 for Hungary, 1 for Czech Republic)
•28 international workshops organized by third parties
The deliverables were also shared with 23 countries and regions as part of Country engagement activities led by ITU and WHO: Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria, Turkey, RCC+SEEHN, Croatia, Poland, Finland, Moldova, Germany, Romania, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Malta, Estonia, Austria, Portugal, Slovakia, Belarus, Ireland, Norway, France.
Hub received political commitment from:
•Hungary for co-creation of a Roadmap for the setup of a national implementation of an mHealth intervention in the area of Diabetes prevention and management
•Czech Republic for co-creation of a Roadmap for integration of mHealth in the national health system
As such the Hub established itself as an internationally recognized entity in the space of mobile health.
In February 2022, the Hub launched a "Hub Learn and Forum" Platform to bring the community together and exchange of knowledge and expertise in mHealth and open source material for integration of mHealth services in national infrastructures.
