'Standardisation needed for cross-border eHealth services'[fr][de] 

EU-27 and the members of the European Economic Area adopted, on 19 April 2007, a common declaration on their commitment to pursue structured co-operation on cross-border electronic health services across Europe. 

"We want to give patients access to their medical records and patient summaries from everywhere within the EU. This not only serves the continuity of care but also affords safety in an emergency," explained the German State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Klaus Theo Schröder - the declaration was adopted at the eHealth Conference 2007 . 

This year's conference had 'From Strategies to Applications' as its guiding theme, thus focusing on the implementation of electronic health-service applications and infrastructures such as electronic prescription, electronic patient file and other services made possible with an electronic health card. 

The signing countries agreed that EU-wide cross-border electronic health services can only be developed once national eHealth infrastructures are in place and that, therefore, national eHealth road maps must be taken into account when planning content-wide infrastructures. 

The declaration also strongly highlights the need for greater synergies with research and education and urges member states to work on common standards on the field together with the eHealth industry and other stakeholders. Indeed, European standardisation is expected to open up new market opportunities in the field.

The declaration proposes that the Commission launch large-scale pilot projects to test European co-operation with regards to the application of improved patient summaries in different health contexts, such as medical emergencies or the dispensing of prescriptions.

Europeans' increasing mobility has brought the need for quality medical care to follow a patient beyond national and regional borders and health systems. This will require modernisation of Europe's health systems with eHealth components such as standardised electronic documentation and interoperable communication between health systems. 

The EU eHealth action plan (2004) seeks to boost the creation of national e-Health infrastructure systems, electronic health records and patient summaries and to ensure their interoperability.