Medical, instrumental, and technological progress enable a number of e-health applications that could have breakthrough effects on society; however the strong fragmentation that characterises the health landscape is keeping the sector aback. Only through the wide consensus on standards it will be possible to find, access, compare, analyse and process health records seamlessly across borders and platforms, unleashing the full potentials of connected health. 

Unfortunately, until today, e-health has suffered from “pilotitis”, that is the development of independent pilots, each leading to isolated solutions “that could not be linked or scaled because of the lack of standards and interoperability” explains Michael Strübin, EU Programme Director, Personal Connected Health Alliance, in his LinkedIn post “mHealth and telemedicine standards prevail”

Despite this disheartening start, things are changing and good news comes from the Nordic Countries. In recognising the crucial role of standardisation, the health authorities of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland have joined forces developing a shared reference architecture for personal connected health and care technology  based on the work of the Continua Alliance (PCHA) to facilitate market access and accelerate the uptake of integrated e-health solutions reaping the benefits of the shift to a personalised distributed health system. 

“The Nordic countries try to compensate for a small market by establishing national bodies to select, implement and govern national Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) interoperability standards and architectures”. 

At the same time also other countries are acknowledging the need for a coordinated approach to foster harmonisation among health systems, data and applications. Interestingly the countries or regions of Austria, Catalonia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have written a joint letter urging the EC to “make time for a European evaluation of an end-to-end interoperability framework based on international standards for personal connected health […] towards a common European approach”. 

With 5G coming into play the potentialities of connected health and benefits can grow exponentially allowing high-quality healthcare to be affordable and close to all patients. Reaching wide consensus on standards is crucial for not missing this opportunity.