EU mHealth Hub Project - Horizon 2020

This Project is co-funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 2016-2017 Work Programme, under action “Establishing EU mHealth Hub including evidence for the integration of mHealth in the healthcare systems”.

The push to use Information and Communication Technologies - specifically mobile technology (or mHealth) - to support health care has been driven by the need to find cost-effective ways to overcome two major challenges on the horizon for healthcare in Europe. The first of these is an aging population suffering from a rise in chronic diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. The second is the associated rise in cost for provision of healthcare for these conditions, as a result of an increase in volume of cases and treatment being available for more conditions and more complex conditions. Years of Living with Disability (YLD) increases faster than the Years of Life Lost (YLL) for many of the big chronic diseases, as a result of modern healthcare providing more services and more effective treatment. At the same time, we see a decrease in the proportion of the population in their productive years, providing the health and care services.

The use of mHealth is of interest to parties looking at ways to overcome these challenges because it enables a shift in focus towards early diagnosis and detection of changes in risk of disease, promotion of health and prevention, and self- management of chronic diseases. Early experiences suggest that mHealth can achieve this in a significantly cost-effective manner: the European Commission (EC) itself has estimated cost savings in health services across Europe of up to €99bn from the successful deployment of mobile technology to support healthcare delivery.

In cases of international health epidemics or in achieving development objectives, governments and international organizations have found a clear case for investing in dedicated institutional and operational support for peer-to-peer and cross-border knowledge sharing. These are typically referred to as ‘Knowledge Hubs’ or ‘Innovation Hubs’ (“Hubs”). Investment in these ‘Hubs’ allows countries to learn from the practical experiences of their peers, including what pitfalls to avoid, and what practices to adopt. It also allows countries with noteworthy development experiences to share their knowledge to either further refine their own experiences, or to develop meaningful international relationships with other countries wishing to learn from them.

The WHO and ITU have proposed creation of a joint mHealth Hub for Europe based on their previous success in deploying this approach. The Hub is intended to serve as a mechanism to share success in mHealth across the European region and boost uptake of mHealth solutions amongst national governments. At a high level, the proposed mHealth Hub will provide services aligned to the core functions of operational research, training and education, identifying standards, regulatory and policy goals, implementation support and consulting. It will have a dual focus on knowledge management & innovation, and on practical implementation (supporting EU member states to launch large-scale mHealth interventions). This dual focus is particularly important for mHealth given that one of the biggest barriers facing the broader adoption of mHealth is scaling up from pilot programs. This barrier can only be overcome with targeted implementation support and development of mHealth evidence at scale. Accordingly, these are the core functions being provided by the WHO and ITU under their joint initiative Be He@lthy, Be Mobile and are subsequently those proposed for the Hub.

The main objectives of the project are the following:

• To establish a ‘Knowledge and Innovations Hub for mHealth’ to enable and monitor mHealth innovation and adoption in Europe;
• To support the development of national mHealth interventions in selected EU member states to champion the uptake of mHealth at scale.

Within the first objective of the project, WHO and ITU have to select a reputed and established non-commercial Institution located in Europe as a Host for the establishment of the EU mHealth Hub. The selected host will be announced soon.

With the support of the WHO-ITU partnership, national implementations will create precedence for mHealth at scale in Europe, pave the way for other Member States to follow suit and serve as a transfer of knowledge and experience from the global WHO-ITU Be He@lthy, Be Mobile initiative to the mHealth Hub in Europe. Over the longer term, the mHealth Hub will serve as a resource for Horizon 2020 eligible countries to support them in deploying and regulating mHealth in their national health services.