As part of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe the Commission aims to provide patients secure access to digital health records by 2015.

Speaking at the Global eHealth Forum in Hamburg Flora Girogio of the EC’s ICT for Health unit said DAE will develop the necessary infrastructure.

There are seven pillars to the strategy, which encompass issues ranging from developing interoperability and standards to ultra fast Internet access, digital literacy and eGovernment solutions.

As part of its €11 billion investment in developing Europe’s digital infrastructure over the next ten years the Commission will include a focus on eHealth.

The goal is to raise Internet coverage to 100% by 2013 and to facilitate data exchange at greater than 30 Mbps by 2020. Standards and interoperability among IT systems across Member States is another major concern of the DAE, and by 2012 a minimum set of common patient data should be available for interoperable patient records.

The EC-funded epSOS project, involving 12 Member States, has launched a pilot project in this area. Girogio also announced that a Memorandum of Understanding is to be signed between the United States and Europe in around four months on the interoperability of health data exchange.

The DAE has launched pilot initiatives to equip Europeans with secure online access to their medical health data by 2015 and to achieve widespread deployment of telemedicine services by 2020.

“Telemedicine can help chronic patients and we are urging decision-makers and payers to invest in this technology,“ Giorgio said. ”The most underused resource in healthcare is the patient and there is a common understanding among Member States that patients have to be empowered.“