Essential levels of health information in Europe: An action plan for a coherent and sustainable infrastructure

- The Expert Group on Health Information is discussing future plans for the construction of a European health information infrastructure. Health professionals and citizens have the right and interest to follow these plans closely.
- A comprehensive vision is required to harmonize broad societal goals with technical and legislative issues in cross-border information exchange. The conceptual framework should build upon common social goals, monitoring needs and methodological solutions, identified through four distinct action levels.
- The concept of “Essential Levels of Health Information” may help ensuring an equal and efficient public provision of health information in Europe.

The European Union needs a common health information infrastructure to support policy and governance on a routine basis. A stream of initiatives conducted in Europe during the last decade resulted into several success stories, but did not specify a unified framework that could be broadly implemented on a continental level.The recent debate raised a potential controversy on the different roles and responsibilities of policy makers vs the public health community in the construction of such a pan-European health information system.While institutional bodies shall clarify the statutory conditions under which such an endeavour is to be carried out, researchers should define a common framework for optimal cross-border information exchange.This paper conceptualizes a general solution emerging from past experiences, introducing a governance structure and overarching framework that can be realized through four main action lines, underpinned by the key principle of “Essential Levels of Health Information” for Europe.The proposed information model is amenable to be applied in a consistent manner at both national and EU level. If realized, the four action lines outlined here will allow developing a EU health information infrastructure that would effectively integrate best practices emerging from EU public health initiatives, including projects and joint actions carried out during the last ten years.The proposed approach adds new content to the ongoing debate on the future activity of the European Commission in the area of health information.