Workshop on eHealth Trends

New patients
The project focuses on the "new patients or consumers" and the digital divide in Europe. The aim of the project is to investigate European health consumer's use of, their attitudes to and their desires with regards to information and communication technology for health purposes, eHealth.

First survey in October
The project will establish a European-level survey on eHealth consumer trends as a natural expansion of previous surveys conducted nationally by the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Some of the questions will be based on the Eurobarometer 58.0 Survey on European Union citizens and sources for information about health (2003).  The survey will be conducted with 18 months interval. The proposal has been successfully evaluated and we are now entering the negotiation phase. The project started 1 June 2005 with the first survey planned for October this year. The project duration periode is 36 months.

First time in Europe

This project will for the first time in Europe investigate eHealth consumers using representative samples from each of the participating countries. We will combine methods from previous US and European initiatives, to further investigate the nature of Internet use for health purposes. This is in line with the methodology used in the three previous Norwegian studies.

Seven countries

Partners from seven European countries are participating in the project: Denmark (Danish Centre for Health Telematics), Germany (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg), Greece (Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology, ICS-FORT), Latvia (Health Promotion State Agency), Poland (Medical University of Wroclaw), Portugal (Universidade de Aveiro / IEETA )and Norway (NST). The photo illustrates the participants in the Workshop, June 2005 in Tromsø.

The countries have been selected in order to ensure a broad European coverage and to be able to compare countries in pairs from the different regions. All partners will take a national responsibility to prepare and coordinate the survey in their respective countries. In addition all partners will contribute equally in the preparation of the study and in dissemination in European and international publication.

Publication by March 2006

The first publication of the results will be due by March 2006 (national results) and May 2006 (international results). The aim of the first workshop and kick-off, was to refine the questionnaire which was initiated during a pre-project workshop in Barcelona, May 2004, where some of the partners were present.