The Journal of mHealth Vol 3 Issue 1 (Feb/Mar 2016) | Page 21

Industry News

EU Working Group Aims to Draft
Guidelines to Improve mHealth
App Data Quality
The European Commission has set up a working group to
develop guidelines for assessing the validity and reliability of the
data that health apps collect and process.
The guidelines will form part of the follow up work that resulted
from the Commission's Green Paper on mobile health which
was published in 2014. The Green Paper and the subsequent
stakeholder consultation identified safety and transparency of
information as one of the main issues for mHealth uptake. As
the market develops the large number of lifestyle and wellbeing
apps available, combined with no clear evidence on their quality
and reliability, is raising concerns about the ability of consumers
to assess their usefulness. This could limit the effective uptake
of mHealth apps to the benefit of public health.
Ensuring quality of the data that health apps collect and process
is also essential for linking apps to electronic health records and
for their effective uptake in clinical practice. In two open stakeholder meetings (on 12 May 2015 and 6 July 2015), stakeholders
confirmed that it would be useful to work on common assessment methodologies for mHealth.
The guidelines that the new Working Group will develop are
expected to build on existing initiatives and best practices in
Europe. The group will seek to provide common quality criteria

and assessment methodologies that could help different stakeholders (users, developers, vendors of electronic health record
systems, payers etc.) in assessing the validity and reliability of
mobile health applications.
In order to fully benefit from the mobile health apps that people
increasingly use to monitor their lifestyle and health status or to
manage their chronic disease, it should be possible in the future
to link data from these apps to the electronic health records.
This means that patients would be able to give access to their
health professionals to consult the data collected by the apps.
Also, health professionals need the reassurance about the reliability of the apps, in order to be able to recommend apps to
their patients and take apps' data into consideration in a treatment/monitoring process.
As a result of a public call for expression of interest, which
closed on 04 December 2015, the Commission received 75
applications. 20 of them were selected taking into account the
balanced representation of relevant know-how and areas of
interest in order to ensure the highest level of expertise, as well
as gender and geographical balance.
The group will have its first meeting in March 2016. The guidelines are expected to be finalised by the end of 2016. n

UK Government Announces New
Funding for a Paperless NHS
More than £4bn of funding has been set
aside by the UK government in a new
attempt to create a paperless National
Health Service. The funding will be
used to improve areas such as electronic
records and online appointments, prescriptions and consultations.

Full details of the funding are still being
agreed between the Department of
Health and NHS England, but the aim
will be to allow patients to book services
and order prescriptions online, access
apps and digital tools and choose to speak
to their doctor online or via a video link.

In announcing the additional funds,
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said doctors found filling out paperwork and
bureaucracy ‘frustrating’.

The initiative is expected to include:
»» £1.8bn to create a paper-free NHS
and r emove outdated technology like
fax machines
»» £1bn on cyber security and data
consent
»» £750m to transform out-of-hospital
care, medicines and digitise social
care and emergency care

“We know that proper investment in IT
can save time for doctors and nurses and
means they can spend more time with
patients," he told the BBC's Andrew
Marr Show.

Continued on page 20

The Journal of mHealth

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