As part of its effort to facilitate the involvement of Eastern partner countries in relevant EU projects, programmes and initiatives, EU4Digital’s eHealth team has performed an analysis on the best practices available in the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) repository, and assessed interest in particular areas among stakeholders from Eastern partner countries.

In addition to supporting innovative practices, EIP on AHA also serves as a platform that involves a vast array of players to address Active and Healthy Ageing, including organisations, industry, the investment community, health and social providers, academia as well as national and regional public authorities.

The EIP on AHA is coordinated and managed by Funka, which facilitates the dissemination of information and best practices through EIP on AHA instruments, and is also the author of the Blueprint on Digital Transformation of Health and Care for the Ageing Society.

Further Eastern partner countries’ participation in this programme would be mutually beneficial both to the partner countries and the EU, as well as other members of the network, as the sharing of established good practices paves the way for the adoption of proven, innovative solutions across regions. For citizens and patients, it means that health solutions can be integrated in their everyday lives in a faster way with already proven impact – with solutions like remote doctor consultations and health insights from health data analysis.

As part of its analysis, the EU4Digital eHealth team looked at over 70 practices and sorted them into four priority areas that are relatable to the Blueprint 2018 priorities. The four priority areas address data analytics, proactive prevention, digital solutions for connected health and digital support for integrated care.

• Data analytics is about focusing on population health management and risk prediction, improvement of quality and reliability of health data and patient consent management to enable patients to grant consent for sharing their data. 

• Proactive prevention is about patient-centred care and best practices, as well as methods and stimulating citizen and non-profit organisation engagement in limiting the gaps in health and digital literacy.

• A good example of digital solutions for connected health are tele-medicine options that enable patients to follow up with their doctors remotely.

• Digital support for integrated care is about both the tools for the patient and the tools for the care professional and the data that is shared between them.

The next part of the task was to determine which priorities are more topical for the Eastern Partnership region, with the aim of facilitating the establishment of strong regional, thematic network sites within the EIP on AHA framework.

The identified priority order was then applied to the good practice list and a first set of recommendations was drafted for the Eastern partner countries. One of the EIP on AHA programme activities is the Twinning Scheme. The Twinning Scheme is a programme that enables good practices from one Reference Site to be adapted at another. The provision of selected best practice recommendations for Eastern partner countries, in line with their innovation and development interests and goals, therefore aims to promote country participation in the programme.

Determining the best innovative practices that are the most topical for the Eastern Partnership region will facilitate knowledge sharing about eHealth and solutions, which at their very core are aimed at prolonging the healthy life years of ageing people and taking advantage of modern technologies to do that.

Find out more

Blueprint on Digital Transformation of Health and Care for the Ageing Society: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/blueprint_en

European Innovative Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/home_en

EIP on AHA Repository: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/repository_en

Funka: https://www.funka.com/en/