The Maltese Presidency proposes to organise a High-Level Conference on eHealth in keeping with the practice established by first-semester Presidencies since 2007. The main objective will be to bring together high-level policymakers from all EU MS and other key stakeholders to discuss the most important current issues of common interest regarding the effective, safe and economic application of ICT to the planning, delivery and evaluation of health services. High-level delegates will be invited from all EU MS, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland & USA. The Presidency will co-locate the event with a Health IT conference & exhibition organised by HIMSS Europe. Partnering with HIMSS will help reach a wider and more diverse audience, including key stakeholders from the health IT industry, allowing EU eHealth policies and the outcome of relevant EU-funded research and innovation to reach a wider audience. The co-located events will be known collectively as “eHealth Week 2017” (EHW17). The EHW17 programme will be both diverse and comprehensive, highlighting developments taking place in various aspects of eHealth such as legal, organisational, semantic and technical. The overarching theme of EHW17 is “Data for Health: the key to personalised sustainable care”. Subjects discussed will include: - Patient access to and sharing of health data - Moving health data safely onto cloud infrastructure - Sharing personal health data across country borders - Improving effectiveness, safety and privacy of mHealth - Scaling up digital innovation for health and care - International cooperation in eHealth - Smart environments & integrated care - Data management and analytics for personalised medicine & public health policy EHW17 will include an Informal Working Lunch for high-level delegates, during which they will be invited to discuss the health-related aspects of the mid-term review of the Digital Single Market. Both Presidency and Commission will have a stand on the exhibition floor.

Oral diseases and conditions are the 3rd most expensive diseases to treat in the EU. They affect about half of the EU population. As highlighted in the 2021 WHO Oral Health Resolution, there are major challenges in the financing of oral health care: in deviation from the UN and WHO goal of Universal Health Coverage, many EU citizens do not have access to essential oral health care without financial hardship. This causes detrimental impacts for the individual citizen, while increasing costs and wasting resources on the macro level. Research-policy gaps and research-practice gaps keep triggering inertia and inaction instead of addressing the persistent, albeit largely preventable, burden of oral diseases. To this end, the PRUDENT (Prioritization, incentives and Resource use for sUstainable DENTistry) project aims to develop and implement an innovative and context-adaptive framework for optimized financing of oral care. PRUDENT brings together top investigators from prestigious universities, public authorities and policymakers, civil society and patient organizations, health insurers, and health professionals, to achieve a step change in collective problem solving. Given the comprehensiveness of the topic, PRUDENT uses a targeted approach that is entirely focused on four major root-causes underlying the current limitations of oral care financing. Using a mixed-methods research approach, PRUDENT will: (i) co-develop oral health system performance indicators and implement them in EU-wide monitoring framework; (ii) conduct real-world and lab experiments to identify improved oral care financing mechanisms; (iii) leverage regulatory learning, needs-adaptive resource planning and deliberative priority setting to enhance the improvement of oral care financing. The knowledge gained will be merged into the PRUDENT Financing Companion with policy briefs and decision aid tools for concretely actionable and context-adaptive improvement of oral care financing.

Oral diseases and conditions affect more than 3.5 billion people worldwide. They are the 3rd most expensive diseases to treat in the EU and disproportionally affect vulnerable groups. In deviation from the UN and WHO goal of Universal Health Coverage, many EU citizens do not have access to quality oral care without financial hardship. To this end, the DELIVER (DELiberative ImproVEment of oRal care quality) project aims to enhance the quality of oral care through deliberative dialogue and action involving citizens, patients, providers, payers and policymakers. DELIVER will create a synergistic problem-solving ecosystem to convert deliberative dialogues into meaningful improvement of oral care quality. DELIVER brings together top investigators from prestigious universities, civil society and patient organizations, health professionals, policymakers, and SME/industry to achieve a step change in collective problem solving. Given the comprehensiveness of the topic, DELIVER uses a targeted approach that is entirely focused on five major root-causes underlying the current limitations of oral care systems. Using a mixed-methods research approach, DELIVER will co-develop and co-produce new quality improvement approaches in three phases. The 1st phase involves situational analysis, consenting of core quality indicators, and development of a EU-wide monitoring framework. The 2nd phase involves in-depth analysis of select quality improvement approaches: (i) PROMs/PREMs-based quality improvement in dental practices; (ii) community-based quality improvement for vulnerable groups; (iii) quality-oriented commissioning of oral health services. The regulatory determinants of oral care quality improvement will be scrutinized. In the 3rd and final phase, the knowledge gained in the 1st and 2nd phases will be merged into the DELIVER Quality Toolkit with manuals and digital tools for concretely actionable and context-adaptive approaches for oral care quality improvement.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Europe with an expected increase of about 25% by 2035. A wide and unacceptable variability in terms of access to research, innovation and quality care exists between and within countries. Possible solutions are an increase in knowledge by funding research, and a more equitable transfer of what we already know to everyone. Comprehensive Cancer Centers and Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks may be the core of CCIs that deliver quality care and provide resources to improve and integrate care, research and education. Data already available confirm that the level of "CCI maturity" in Member States is widely different, from some countries lacking CCIs completely. A European initiative, implemented in all Member States, based on a capacity building programme (CBP), will help reduce inequalities, in the context of other actions ongoing, such as CRANE, JANE and UNCAN. CBP is a complex intervention that requires multiple and integrated actions delivered to all the relevant stakeholders. CBP will be designed with an inclusive approach, tailored to the baseline status, capable of creating a change and improvement in research and care, with greater integration between them, supported by an education programme. It will operate at various levels: Individuals, Institutions and Systems. The CSA will implement the following steps: define CCI Maturity Model including quality indicators; profile the CCIs in each MS and a few ACs in terms of CCI presence and levels of maturity; design tailored CBP interventions, giving priority to MSs without any CCI; deliver online training courses open to teams in all MSs and ACs, implement targeted onsite interventions; scale up and sustain development; disseminate, exploit and report results. The CSA will maximize impact by bridging with the work of ongoing EU cancer research projects. National focal points will be key informants in making the links between the CSA, the EC and MSs.

The 15-month coordination and support action “4.UNCAN.eu” will generate a strategic agenda to launch UNCAN.eu, a European initiative to UNderstand CANcer proposed by the Mission Board and the European Beating Cancer Plan. This research agenda will be built with the final aim of achieving a new breakthrough in cancer prevention and treatment that will contribute to saving European citizens’ lives and help ensuring an optimal quality of life to disease survivors. To reach a new level of understanding, UNCAN.eu will take advantage of recent advances in research data generation and data sciences. Reliable, high-quality cancer research data generated by experimental model analysis and collected from longitudinal follow-up of cancer patients will be shared and integrated at an unprecedented scale within a Federated Cancer Research data hub, in the context of the General Data Protection Regulation. This information will be used by relevant players in Europe and beyond to address urgent and essential scientific and medical challenges in cancer prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and survivorship, in males and females of various ages. These challenges, identified in close interaction with European patients and citizens, will be tackled through competitive, ambitious and innovative, cross-border and trans-disciplinary research programmes built in a problem-solving manner. The definition of challenges will integrate inequalities in cancer research across regions and member states in order to boost the research potential of less-developed regions in Europe. Players will be committed to open science principles, including FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) guiding principles for scientific data collection, management and stewardship. The new understanding gained from the collection and analysis of this wealth of data will apply secondarily to other diseases.