Deployment of the NETC@RDS service: A new step towards a European e-health space

Hundreds of millions of e-cards are used today in Europe in order to provide better and more consistent e-health services to citizens. A major characteristic of all these e-card based systems is, however, that they are only available in a national context. As a result they can not support the free movement of European citizens when visiting other countries. NETC@RDS is an important research project which aims to improve the access of mobile European citizens to the national health care systems using advanced smart card technology. It also aims to implement and evaluate technical solutions for the European Health Insurance Card electronification. The NETC@RDS service has already been successfully tested in many pilot sites throughout Europe. The current phase of the project aims for the deployment of the NETC@RDS concept and services throughout Europe. This includes the deployment of operational services in all targeted sites at European level (500 service points across the 16 participating countries) to enable “non-planned” health care for European citizens who can provide evidence of entitlement. This paper briefly describes the objectives of the “NETC@RDS for eEHIC” project and discusses some recent results achieved and lessons learnt from pilot implementations. It also discusses the new initial deployment phase which is under way. As proven by the pilot implementations, the NETC@RDS concept and smart card-based technical solution can help provide better and more consistent e-health services amongst national health information systems in the important field of inter-state health insurance. It can also provide a promising technical solution for the forthcoming European Health Insurance Card electronification.