As the number of medical web sites in various languages increases, it is more than necessary to establish specific criteria and control measures that give the consumers some guarantee that the health web sites they are visiting, meet a minimum level of quality standards and that the professionals offering the information on the web site are responsible for its contents and activities. There are three major mechanisms in medical quality labelling. The first one is based on third party rating where the web site is assessed by a labelling agency, in terms of certain labelling criteria, and is asked to make some changes to get the accreditation label which is then added onto the web site. The second one examines medical web sites in specific thematic areas, characterizes them against certain criteria, filters some of them based on their characterization, and organizes the rest into web directories to facilitate access by health information consumers. The third mechanism is based on self-adherence to some codes of conduct or ethics that is nothing more than a claim or a pledge with little enforceability (such as, for instance, the American Medical Association Guidelines). MedIEQ will examine the first two mechanisms which are currently being used by the two medical quality labelling agencies participating in the project (WMA, AQUMED). The main problem that these mechanisms face is the need for a continuous review and control of the accredited or classified web sites that means a huge amount of human effort. WMA, for instance, periodically reviews manually the accredited web sites to renew the quality label. On the other hand, AQUMED web directories are periodically updated due to the addition of new sites and changes in the characterization of the already visited ones. MedIEQ aims to advance current medical quality labelling technology capitalizing on the results of previous work on quality labelling and content analysis. MedIEQ labelling systems allows to locate unlabelled medical web sites and label them, and monitor labelled web sites as to whether they are still satisfying the labelling criteria. MedIEQ aims to examine its technology in 7 different European languages (Spanish, Catalan, German, English, Greek, Czech, and Finnish) to demonstrate its applicability. For this purpose, it emphasizes the adaptability of the resulting technology to new languages and medical domains. MedIEQ aims to provide a labelling system that assists the work of the labelling expert increasing the number of labelled medical web sites and improve their monitoring.
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The Joint Action aims to support the eHealth Governance Initiative (eHGI) which functions as platform for technical & political co-operation between Member States on eHealth including their relationship with eHealth Stakeholder Groups which include EU level organisations representing health professionals, hospitals, patients, standards developing organisations & industry. The results of which (recommendations,guidelines) will furthermore support the work of the eHealth Network set up in accordance with Art.14 of the Directive on patients` rights in cross-border healthcare. In the framework of the eHealth Network, the Commission & Member States will discuss and agree on political & strategic issues related to eHealth, in accordance with Art.14 of the Directive, including political prioritization in the eHealth interoperability roadmap and its implementation. To ensure coordination, coherence and consistency between the political level (the eHealth Network) and the expert level (the JA on eHGI), the eHealth Network shall provide guidance for the work of the Joint Action as appropriate.
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This proposal lays out the Work Programme for 2017 within the contents of the Multiannual Work Plan for the European Reference Network for Craniofacial Anomalies and ENT disorders (ERN CRANIO). ERN CRANIO involves teams from 29 European hospitals (10 Member States) that provide care, education, teaching, research and management of rare craniofacial anomalies, cleft lip/palate and ENT disorders. Our vision is that the best multidisciplinary initial care for all those with craniofacial anomalies and ENT disorders is not a privilege to be purchased but a moral right secured for all European patients.
Our MISSION is to consistently and persistently strive towards achieving our vision through:
1. Establishment and management of a steady referral network for patients with craniofacial anomalies and ENT disorders throughout Europe; 2. Improvement of the quality of care, by enhancing diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of the patients with rare craniofacial anomalies and ENT disorders; 3. Minimization of the deviation from our operational standards and sharing best practices through suitable quality improvement initiatives, while monitoring their effectiveness using measures and indicators; 4. Stimulating innovation through multicentre research projects on (genetic) causes, pathophysiology, and associated problems, and introduction of eHealth; 5. Supporting the continuous learning and development of all our members by providing high quality educational and training opportunities to medical, nursing and other healthcare professionals; 6. Disseminating gained knowledge, making it available to all stakeholders.

In Year 1, ERN CRANIO will focus on collecting and analysing the available data on diagnoses, treatment, follow-up programmes, education and eHealth. In addition, the aim is to further expand the network in the first year by including relevant partners and experts. The results of the first year will set the agenda for subsequent years.
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The general objective of EHR-IMPLEMENT is to collect, analyse and compare broad scale electronic health record (EHR) implementations among European countries and provide best practice, policy and strategic recommendations to facilitate EHR implementation initiatives throughout Europe.
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The overall objective is to support member states in developing comparable and coherent patient registries in fields of identified importance (e.g. chronic diseases, rare diseases, medical technology) with the aim to rationalize and harmonize the development and governance of patient registries, thus enabling analyses of secondary data for public health and research purposes. (Please find the entire text in the accompanying Word document, Annex 1b).
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