eHEALTH Activity Report 2009

Chairman: Saad Mezzour (Medtronic Bakken Research Center BV)

Responsible for co-ordinating existing ETSI activities which are already contributing in the eHealth domain, identifying gaps where further standardisation activities might be required and producing standards to plug those gaps which are not the responsibility of other ETSI bodies.

In February 2009 ETSI Project eHEALTH published an ETSI Technical Report (TR), which analyses user services models, technologies and applications supporting eHealth. This work is an initial step in developing eHealth user service models to address interoperable solutions for healthcare data collection, transmission, storage and interchange, all with appropriate security, privacy and reliability.

Work continues on two complementary TRs, one collecting together architectures and service models for eHealth and the other mapping use cases and services to telecommunication services. This work is being carried out in consultation with relevant stakeholders, including both users and medical professionals. It is expected to result in the identification of standardisation gaps, and a set of use cases linked to standards. The ultimate aim of this project is that eHealth systems should offer users better access to more cost-effective healthcare services, irrespective of location.

EP eHEALTH is also working to define the service requirements for Short Range Radio communication and networking such as quality of service (QoS), security, privacy, reliability, robustness, frequency bands, regulatory requirements and power consumption. A TR is scheduled for completion in 2010.

Work on the personalisation of eHealth services by using eHealth user profiles is being progressed with the support of an ETSI Specialist Task Force (STF 352), which was established as a joint project of EP eHEALTH and ETSI’s Human Factors Technical Committee (TC HF). Effective user profile management is critical to achieve eInclusion and eAccessibility. It is important that products and services match the needs of every user, even when those needs may be different from those of the majority. The objective of this work is to demonstrate how services and devices within eHealth can be interoperable and personalised by users to meet the individual’s needs. The work in progress was presented and discussed at numerous international events throughout 2009.