01 Jul The Hub starts working with European countries to support the implementation of mobile health at national level

A series of meetings are being held with countries that expressed interest to collaborate with the Hub

Last June 30th, 16 European countries participated in the webinar organized by the European mHealth Hub to present its strategies for implementing mobile health at the national level. During this meeting, countries that expressed interest to collaborate with the Hub for implementation and support of its activities became aware about objectives and lines of action of the project, and learned how to participate in its different initiatives. The webinar focused especially on country engagement at three levels: implementation and scaling up of disease specific national mHealth programmes; pilot European mHealth Hub knowledge tools such as assessment frameworks, implementation toolkits or policy guidance; strategic support, for examples hosting workshops.

Over 43 people from 16 European countries took part in the webinar and shared national perspectives on several topics related to mobile health implementation, such as specific needs related to mHealth developments in terms of technical and policy support and guidance, examples of integration of mHealth services in national or regional health systems and lessons learnt from use of mHealth to address response to COVID-19.

Besides representatives from European Commission, WHO, ITU, their respective European regional offices and Andalusian Regional Ministry of Health (Spain), participants in the meeting came from different countries: Participants in the meeting came from Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain and Turkey.

The webinar continued with an overview on the mHealth Hub. The main part of the meeting focused on country implementation, with specific presentations about implementation framework, operationalizing country-level implementation of mHealth programmes, next steps and actions, implementation and/or support role. A large portion of time was dedicated to open discussion among participants as well as questions and answers.

After the webinar, a series of meetings are being held with interested countries to explore engagement opportunities according to their health contexts and needs.

The European mHealth Innovation and Knowledge Hub

The European mHealth Innovation and Knowledge Hub is a project promoted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and theWorld Health Organization (WHO), and led by the Ministry of Health of Andalusia (Spain) through the Andalusian Agency for Healthcare Quality (ACSA). The project, funded by the European Commission through the “Horizon 2020” programme, arose from the “Be He@lthy, Be Mobile” initiative of the ITU and the WHO, aims to collect and share national and regional experiences on mHealth and to promote the implementation of mHealth at large scale in the European territories of the WHO, which comprises 53 countries.

To this end, this Hub works as a place for sharing good practices and experiences among different countries and regions, to learn from each other, and to carry out projects for promoting and guiding the development of digital innovation in health systems, through mobile technology, and with a special focus on non-communicable diseases. Among its main outcomes, the mHealth Hub will contribute to analysing the existing assessment models of mHealth services in Europe, to serve as a reference for a hypothetical common framework; will develop toolkits for the implementation of specific services; and will foster the exchange and spread of digital innovations within the health systems of European countries.