EU sets major investments in health IT, telemedicine

The European Commission is proposing ambitious, wide-ranging public investments in digital technologies that will allow it to tackle looming challenges, including the support of an aging population and limiting health care costs.

As part of a decade-long action plan, the EC has proposed establishing a number of major pilots throughout the European Union that will lead to all Europeans having secure, online access to their medical health data by 2015. The plan also calls for widespread deployment of telemedicine services by 2020. As the precursor to all of this, the EC is also proposing that a minimum, common set of patient data be defined that will allow patient records to be accessed or exchanged electronically across all of the EU's 27 member states by 2012.