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HEALTHGATE: The Public Health Portal of the European Union
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Complete and up-to-date information on public health issues is of interest to professional experts as much as to any EU citizen. To ensure that health-related information can be accessible from a single entry point, a EU HEALTHGATE portal will be put into place to document public health matters and to get key messages across to different user categories.
Last update: 02/04 |
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What is HEALTHGATE?
Objectives
How will it work?
Achievements
Who benefits?
The role of IDABC
Technical information
Documentation
What is HEALTHGATE?
HEALTHGATE is an initiative under the EU Public Health Programme 2003-2008 that will provide a one-stop access to significant health information resources in the Community. In particular, HEALTHGATE will:
- Present a thematic overview of Commission activities in the field of public health and related areas;
- Allow pan-European access to national administrations’ work on public health;
- Give citizens, patients, policy makers and other stakeholders access to data and information on public health from Commission and other sources at national and regional levels.
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Objectives
The portal aims at providing a single access point to the following information and services:
- An overview of the results of past and current projects financed by the EU Public Health Programmes accessible through an efficient search engine and providing easy access to relevant databases in Member States and other international organisations;
- An overview of all health related activities of the EU institutions through links to the appropriate websites in the different policy areas (e.g. food production and processing, pharmaceuticals, health care, environment, research, employment, drugs, statistics, workplace health protection, etc.);
- An overview of the activities of health ministries, institutes and organisations at national and regional level.
- A tool to interrogate databases at Community level to produce reports on specific health indicators, such as HIV/AIDS incidence/prevalence, lung cancer incidence (prevalence) and prevalence of all types of diabetes;
- The possibility of launching health information projects that would include advice on health issues, health data publishing, health information storing and sharing of experience;
The inclusion of future public health publications, such as the public health report series or the public health bulletin and other relevant publications.
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How will it work?
The public health portal will bring the current EUPHIN components, such as health surveillance system for communicable diseases and injury surveillance system, together in a user-friendly way. This will be done through an interface upgrade that will take into account the security needs of the different components.
Furthermore, it will include the creation of a capacity to generate and collect relevant health information at EU level as well as the possibility of editing results for electronic publishing from other EU projects.
The relevant information on public health will be collected under a single point of stratified access that will bring together information and provide a platform for many citizen-oriented health information actions under the whole public health programme. This will be done in co-ordination with national sites and initiatives in this area.
The portal will rely on a comprehensive search and linkage mechanism that will make the information at EU level and beyond easily available to the users. In addition, data content will be designed to serve the different users.
The portal will be hosted by the Commission services and will be managed in close co-operation with Member States through the Public Health Portal Editorial Board composed of representatives from the Commission and the Network of Competent Authorities (NCA). The Editorial Board will shape the editorial policy of the Health Portal, advise on thematic approaches and nominate experts who will identify the national websites to which the Portal can be linked.
A group of portal correspondents from all Commission services will be created to further develop the design of the Portal and to put a communication structure into place.
Achievements
A prototype of the Portal is expected to be available by the end of 2004 and to go online by the end of 2005.
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Who benefits?
By offering a single access point for information on public health, a clear thematic structure and easy navigation, HEALTHGATE will benefit:
Citizens and patients: will have better, user-friendlier and multi-lingual access to topical health information, general statistics and descriptive data and information at pan-European level.
Professional audiences: this includes health professionals, teachers, students, policy makers and civil servants in public administrations who need access to timely, accurate and comparable descriptions of health situation, health determinants and health policies in the EU.
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The role of IDA(BC)
IDA will finance the development phase of the Portal and will share the accumulated experience obtained through the development of the Your Europe Portal.The Health Portal will also make use of CIRCA as a networking tool for the Editorial Board and the data providers and TESTA.
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Technical information
Documentation
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Project start date
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2002
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Project completion date
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2005
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Project status
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Development
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IDA budget
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2004: € 600,000
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Responsible service
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DG Health and Consumer Protection
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Project coordinator
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Ms Zinta Podniece
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Contact
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Countries involved
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All EU Member States. Candidate countries and EEA countries will be involved to a certain extent.
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| Global implementation plan |
 EUPHIN GIP - December 2002 (PDF) |
  [222 Kb] |
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