This document represents one of the delivrables (D1) foreseen by the GÉANT Community Programme Task Force.
It provides an initial  Gap analysis on eHealth for the GÉANT NRENs Community.

Content:

eHealth Baselining Event Gap Analysis

  • Objectives and outcomes of the eHealth Baselining Event
  • Community involvement and identified gaps
  • Outcomes and agreed steps forward

eHealth BoF at TNC21  Feedback on proposed workplan

  • Objectives and outcomes of the eHealth BoF at TNC21
  • Community  Involvement and feedback on the proposed workplan
  • Outcomes and agreed steps forward
  • Prioritised List of Work items


eHealth Baselining Event  Gap Analysis

Objectives and outcomes of the eHealth Baselining Event 

The event (Jan 27, 2021) has been attended by about 70 participants, NRENs representatives from 11 different NRENs.  The  primary objective of the first GÉANT Community eHealth Baselining event has been  to understand if the community was ready to start an activity on eHealth. It has been the very first  community event ever organised around eHealth, and,  besides proposing initial ideas for joint activities, it gathered the community response to the new idea of working together on eHealth.  The main goal has been achieved since the event showed that there was enough critical mass to start coordinating NRENs' activities on eHealth to aim at generating synergies on specific topics.

Community involvement and  identified gaps

The event has been structures around 5 main domains:

  1. Networking
  2. T&I
  3. Security
  4. Policy
  5. Clouds


The requests coming from the NRENs community showed considerable potential in working together on the following topics:

  1. Organisation of a training on Security and Privacy, specifically for eHealth. These should target both NRENs eHealth contacts and NRENs member institutions dealing with eHealth.
  2. Sharing information to the NRENs eHealth Community on funding opportunities from the EU Commission on eHealth, with the goal of empowering NRENs through new opportunities to let their eHealth staff and activities grow in the forthcoming years.
  3.  Sharing Best practices and assess the implications of eHealth on AUPs
  4. Working on pushing for the adoption of our community federated AAI infrastructure to access medical data and eHealth research data. There has been a general acknowledgement of the role that our community platforms, based on open standards, can play to boost the adoption of eHealth in general. 
  5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning/Deep Learning applied to eHealth
  6. Storage and data sharing services specifically targeting the needs and requirements of the eHealth community, including common work on PoCs.
  7. Refine NRENs AUPs to fine tune them for eHealth users and services
  8. Need acquire additional information on  latest EU directives/communications and promoted new concepts on eHealth and the EU eHealth Dataspace
  9. Key areas where support at the policy level  is required and developments are needed identified in
    • Data Access policies
    • Enforcement of standards
    • FAIR data approach
    • Trusted research environment
    • Evangelization to Hospitals and their staff 
  10. Join force while liaising with the EU about funding opportunities for the community - and  possible liaison with WHO

Outcomes and agreed steps forward

Consensus has been reached on the following points:

  1. The GÉANT  community welcomes a second, more extended community  event on eHealth
  2. The GÉANT NRENs community favours the idea of establishing a  new Task Force within the GÉANT Community Programme  to gather efforts on supporting the eHealth user community, through the implementation of a specific, community approved workplan.

eHealth BoF at TNC21 - Feedback on the TF workplan


The GÉANT Community Programme has organized a second major community event following the succesfull outcomes of the first eHealth baselining event in term sof participation level and interest shown by the community.  This second event has been a Bird of a Feather session at the TNC21 conference, on June 25, 2021. The request to organize such an event came directly from the NRENs, at the baseline event of January 27.

Objectives and outcomes of the eHealth BoF at TNC21

The main objective of the BoF have been:

  1. The direct verification of the amount of available manpower volunteerely contributed by the community to a possible newly-to-be-established eHealth Task Force
  2. The introduction of the  proospect eHealth TF Steering Committe members to the community
  3. Presentation of the draft eHealth Task Force workplan
  4. Feedback gathering on the proposed workplan for such a Task Force, by identifying the list of top items considered key for the development of the support of eHealth within the community of NRENs and matching them with the workplan.
  5. Present to the community (and identify possible collaborations with) between a potential GÉANT Community Task Force on eHealth and the main EOSC cluster working in the Life Sciences domain: EOSC-Life.
  6. The sharing of information within the NRENs community on funding opportunities for eHealth, liasing with the GÉANT EU-Liaison team
  7. The run of a Mentimeter session to produce a written document gathering the answers from the community. The mentimeter covered feedback gathering on the following main topics:
    1. The proposed Task Force work plan
    2. Interoperability : Open Standards and FAIR data
    3. The overall role of NRENs and the eHealth TF
    4. What is going on at the EU/EC level

 Community  Involvement and feedback on the proposed workplan

The response of the NRENs community to the BoF has been significantly positive. Around 60 people registered to the online event, and around 50 actually participated.
The Steering Committee chair introduced the task force workplan; EOSC-Life representatives presented on the overall structure of the cluster and on the specific item of the EOSC Collaboratory to deploy biomedical applications and implement specific  analysis workflows.
The eH TF work plan presented is described here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LVEKwiRtij0RmZDQ_3Lh_tGuw2FBQyqceO0xv2V8oMU/edit?usp=sharing
The audience clearly confirmed the validity of the proposed work items and overall rated the proposed workplan as reasonable and ambitious in the correct measure.

The proposed Task Force workplan items have been prioritized according to the following picture displaying the relative importance assigned to them:



The target audience for the Security and Privacy Training for eHealth has been suggested, being composed in agreement with the following picture:


Outcomes and agreed steps forward

It has been agreed to officialy request the creation of a new Task Force on eHealth.  The Task Force has been formally approved by the GCC in mid-July 2021.

If approved, it has been decided to seek support from the NRENs to actually implement the proposed eHealth Task Force workplan.

Prioritized List of Work items


The proposed list of prioritized word items is the following one:

  1. Gap Analysis Document
  2. Security and Privacy Training for eHealth
  3. White paper on existing on new community services required by the eHealth Community
  4. Report on key eHealth data sets locations in the NRENs domain and related access protocols
  5. GÉANT Community Cloud Flow demonstration implementing eHealth workflow



 

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