The European Union is committed to harnessing the power of digital health to improve the lives of its citizens. To this end, several innovative projects have been launched to advance the development of electronic health records, digital vaccination cards, and health data-sharing capabilities.
These initiatives, including Xt-EHR, EUVAC, PATHeD, XpanDH, POTENTIAL, xShare, XiA, and LabelDigitalHealth, are focused on promoting interoperability, data portability, and trust in the use of health data.
Funded by the European Commission through various programmes, such as Horizon Europe and the EU4Health Programme, these projects bring together diverse stakeholders, including healthcare providers, researchers, and industry partners, to drive innovation and growth in the digital health sector. By developing and testing new tools and standards, these projects aim to create a seamless and secure environment for exchanging health data, ultimately improving patient care and outcomes.
The secondary use of health data is also being addressed through projects such as TEHDAS II and QUANTUM, which seek to unlock the potential of health data for research, innovation, and policy-making, while ensuring the protection of citizens' rights and trust in the digital health ecosystem. Different projects and initiatives develop the use or reuse of data, among these:
Primary use of health data
Xt-EHR project
The Joint Action Xt-EHR project establishes guidelines for developing a comprehensive, interoperable, and secure Electronic Health Records (EHR) system that promotes smooth connections among healthcare providers within Member States (MS). This strategic initiative seeks to provide clear directives for enhancing patient care, streamlining data exchange, and improving overall efficiency in the healthcare ecosystem.
European Digital Vaccination Card (EUVAC)
European Digital Vaccination Card (EUVAC) is crafted in MyHealth@EU services as a self-contained document, empowering individuals to monitor their vaccination histories. European citizens will be equipped to collect and access reliable information about their vaccine history/record status, authenticated by qualified health professionals.
- More information: EU Funding & Tenders Portal
PATHeD
The PaTHeD project tested and produced the first citizen access mobile app toolkit, enhancing data-sharing capabilities for the European Union and implementing Member States. The project tested a mobile app reference implementation for citizen access to their translated Patient Summary, deployed the most appropriate tools for the national eHealth infrastructures and provided the first evaluation of the extended MyHealth@EU (MyHealth@EU - Flyer) infrastructure in production by June 2024.
XpanDH Project
The XpanDH Project supports an expanding ecosystem of individuals and organisations developing, experimenting with and adopting the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF), which will provide a crucial distribution to the European Health Data Space. It is a 2-year Coordination and Support Action financed by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.
POTENTIAL - For European Digital Identity
The POTENTIAL - For European Digital Identity is one of the four large-scale pilots selected by the Commission to experiment with digital identity throughout Europe. It aims at fostering innovation, collaboration and growth in six digital identity sectors (governmental services, banking, telecommunications, driving licence, electronic signature and health). POTENTIAL represents a huge promise and marks a crucial step in our collective efforts to strengthen the European Union with the digital decade.
xShare
The xShare envisions everyone sharing their health data in EEHRxF with a button click. The xShare Yellow Button is part of health portals and patient apps, allowing people to exercise their data portability rights under GDPR. Hence, the European EHRxF will drive research and innovation in EHDS.
XiA
The Xpanding Innovative Alliance (XiA) project aims to transform healthcare through digital interoperability education. BRU Digital Health International laid the groundwork for developing scalable training in healthcare interoperability, creating the tools and networks that XiA project will expand. By enhancing educational frameworks, XiA aims to amplify the impact of its predecessor, ensuring a broader reach and a stronger focus on real-world application.
Through creating and distributing high-quality materials and courses about digital health interoperability, XiA aims to empower stakeholders—healthcare professionals, providers, and health IT providers and digital health solution providers—with the necessary skills to embrace EHDS-related standards and foster a culture of interoperability.
LabelDigitalHealth Network
The LabelDigitalHealth Network results from Label2Enable, a coordination and support action funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Leiden University Medical Centre.
Building on the mission of the Institute of Innovation through Health Data to foster collaboration among multiple stakeholders in the trustworthy use of high-quality data to improve care and accelerate research - the LabelDigitalHealth Network will ensure the delivery of trusted, high-value app quality labels. This will be achieved by implementing the Pan-European app quality label roadmap and overseeing uniform, reliable assessments across the EU and beyond.
Supporting actions for the secondary use of health data under the European Health Data Space
To ensure the effective implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) for the secondary use of health data, several complementary projects and initiatives are supporting the development of key infrastructures, governance models, and guidelines.
These actions aim to operationalise a secure, trustworthy, and interoperable environment for reusing health data for research, innovation, policy-making, and regulatory activities.
Central Platform Development Project
The European Commission is leading the development of the Central Platform, a core component of the EHDS infrastructure that will enable the secure and efficient cross-border exchange of health data for secondary use across Member States.
The Central Platform development project is ensures transparency, reusability, and interoperability with national infrastructures.
- More about the project and the testing environment: EHDS Acceptance Environment
- Open-source resources
EHDS2 Pilot Project
The EHDS2 Pilot, managed by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA), brings together a consortium of national authorities, research infrastructures, and health data hubs. The project ran from October 2022 to December 2024 and piloted cross-border data sharing for secondary use cases in line with the EHDS Regulation.
Its work focused on testing technical solutions, promoting interoperability, and providing recommendations on implementing national health data access bodies (HDABs).
- EHDS2 Pilot website: EHDS2 Pilot
- Project deliverables on the Funding & Tenders Portal: EHDS2 Pilot Deliverables – HaDEA portal
TEHDAS2 Joint Action
The TEHDAS2 Joint Action, co-funded by the EU4Health Programme, supports Member States in preparing for the EHDS implementation by developing common guidelines, technical specifications and recommendations. The initiative focuses on data discovery, access procedures, and stakeholder engagement strategies.
TEHDAS2 is building on the achievements of the first TEHDAS Joint Action, bringing together ministries of health, public institutions, and experts from across Europe.
Access the project deliverables on the Funding & Tenders Portal: TEHDaS2 Deliverables – HaDEA portal.
QUANTUM
With a consortium of 35 partners, QUANTUM is an EU-funded project that aims to create a common label system for Europe that assesses and communicates the quality and utility of datasets in all countries for scientific and health innovation purposes. These labels will enable researchers, policymakers, and healthcare professionals to identify high-quality data for research and decision-making.
Capacity Building
The Capacity Building project aims to develop training and a toolkit to support Member States establishing and operationalising their Health Data Access Bodies (HDABs). There will be fundamental and extended trainings on HDABs, National Dataset Catalogue, Data Access Application Management Systems, Secure Processing Environments and Data Quality. These trainings will be available through the EU Academy platform.
Community of Practice
The idea of creating a community of practice with competent authorities for the secondary use of health data in the European Health Data Space (EHDS) started in the discussions while preparing the applications for the direct grants to set up Health Data Access Bodies (HDAB) [EU4H 2022 DI-g-22-22.01].
The HDABs-CoP mission is to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among Competent Authorities and Affiliated Entities involved in establishing the HDABs and responsible for the secondary use of health data within the European Health Data Space (EHDS).
