France's participation in European joint actions

France is participating in European joint actions for sharing good eHealth practices at the European level and developing new eHealth services. France is currently involved in the following initiatives:

• X-eHealth, a project that is developing the architecture of a format for the cross-border sharing of electronic medical records (laboratory results, medical imaging results, hospital discharge forms, integration of rare diseases into medical records);

• eHAction, a joint action to elaborate strategic orientations and tools in priority domains such as increasing patient autonomy and improving continuity of treatment;

• TEHDaS, a joint action to create a European health data space.

Representatives from the DNS, the ANS, French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), the Health Data Hub and third parties (hospitals and research establishments in particular) are involved in these joint actions. 

The action calendar is as follows:

X-eHealth, data interoperability project

X-eHealth is a project of strategic importance for the European Health Union that aims to establish a common framework for sharing patient data.

47 eHealth stakeholders are involved in this project and are developing the architecture for a digital cross-border medical record format that is interoperable, secure and designed for 4 types of use:

• laboratory results;

• medical imaging results;

• hospital discharge forms;

• inclusion of rare diseases in patient summaries.

eHAction, the joint eHealth initiative

Initiated to support the actions associated with the European eHealth roadmap, this initiative is being led by a consortium composed of representatives of EU states.

The aim of the eHAction initiative is to:

• highlight the importance of eHealth as a complementary resource for public health services;

• explore new technologies and tools for facilitating the management of chronic diseases;

• improve the sustainability and efficiency of health systems;

• encourage personalised treatment and patient autonomy.

The joint action involves elaborating strategic orientations and tools in the following priority domains:

• patient autonomy: empowering patients to control their own healthcare thanks to an enlightened and sustainable use of digital tools in healthcare provision;

• innovative use of health data: developing methodologies for better handling big data in the health domain;

• improved continuity of treatment: supporting the adoption of eHealth services infrastructure;

• overcoming implementation hurdles: elaborating guidelines for interoperability, data protection and health system security;

• integrating national policies and sustainability: preparing cross-border cooperation on policy post-2021 and integrating the results into national policies.

TEHDAS (Towards a European Health Data Space), a joint action for a European space

This joint action aims to create a European health data space and to meet one of the priorities of the European Commission for the 2019-2025 period.

A common European health data space will help to improve information sharing and access to various types of health data (electronic medical records, genomic data, patient register data, etc.).

It will thereby facilitate the provision of healthcare (primary use of data) as well as health research and the elaboration of health policy (secondary use of data).

The whole data system will be designed with transparency and citizen data protection in mind and will improve the transferability of health data, as provided for under Article 20 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The European health data space will be founded on 3 main pillars:

• a system of governance for data and rules for sharing data;

• quality of data;

• robust infrastructure and interoperability.