On 11-12 December 2019, the first Digital Health Society (DHS) Summit took place in Finland, under the patronage of the Finnish Presidency of the Council of Europe, offering an open two-day forum for the many European initiatives and projects on the data-driven transformation of health and social care to converge and build collaboration bridges.
The ECHAlliance organised the event and various DHE partners, namely empirica, European Institute for Health Records (EuroRec), Shared Services of the Portuguese Ministry of Health (SPMS) and European Patients Forum (EPF), contributed to the discussions that took place on both days of the event.
The event attracted organisations from over 16 countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Attendees included startups, small- and medium-sized enterprises, national and international companies as well as policy makers, academics, and a variety of health associations and non-governmental organisations.
Early in 2020, a full summary will be published with the Summit conclusions. It will inform and influence the “European Digital Health Space” discussions taking place in the new European Commission, with the aim to foster a broad agreement about the most urgent priorities to be tackled in order to maximise the impact of digital transformation of health and social care systems across the EU in the next years.
A brief initial report of the event can be found here.