With Europeans’ life expectancy increasing, a 9% increase in the EU’s GDP costs related to health and social care is expected by 2050. In this context, ICT can be our most powerful ally to maintain cost-efficient and high-quality health and social care, as it empowers people of every age to manage their health and quality of life in a more efficient way. Offered care has to become more patient-centered, with a focus on prevention, early diagnosis, and chronic conditions, while the aging-well industry needs to empower the European population to integrate relevant ICT-products and services in their private lives and professional practice. With ICT European citizens could benefit from better and cheaper health and aging-well services. The introduction of ICT alone is estimated to improve the efficiency of health care by 20% and to empower users of every age to better manage their health. Therefore Information and Communication Technology for health and wellbeing (eHealth) is becoming increasingly important, for delivering top-quality care to European citizens, as it is also stressed in the ‘eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020’.

The project will support the development of an online platform designed to educate and equip EU Citizens with transversal skills, and basic skills such as digital literacy, communication, and networking skills, thus improving the level of digital health literacy among the aging population. Furthermore, it will support the development of innovative ICT-based content and services with a practical focus on learning. More specifically, the iHeal platform will support online training modules for digital and health literacy, analyze relative risks and benefits, evaluate information for credibility and quality, communicate with health providers, navigate eHealth services, develop a basic health terms glossary, assess country-specific health access info, which will also be available through mobile platforms/applications. Additionally, the platform will support eHealth tools (health services navigation and communication, basic health terms glossary), peer to peer support tools, patients’ engagement systems, and patients-center health practice management.

Erasmus+
Project Number: 2018-1-TR01-KA204-059639
Project Duration: November 2018 until October 2020