On 19 February 2020, the European Commission published its communication entitled "Shaping Europe's Digital future"
The purpose of this communication addressed to the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions is to inform them about the issue of Digital Europe and shape the goals for 2025.
The above Communication accompanies the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Communication on the European Data Strategy. The document presents three main pillars under each of which a number of specific goals were formulated:
This communication’s health relevance is relatively low, it rather focuses on the general direction of the Commission’s digitalisation plan for the next five years to come. Nonetheless, this communication does refer to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and European health data space and recognises their role in better chronic disease management that – according to the Commission – drains over 70% of the EU health system resources. This could indicate that the European Commission is committed to continue in the path of the 2019 Recommendation on harmonising cross-border EHRs with the creation of the EHR exchange format.
This document also recognises the importance of AI and big data in everyday life. AI is expected to be a major focus of the Commission’s digitalisation agenda as indicated in the white paper on artificial intelligence.
