€200m and 20 years: What EU health data projects built, and what EHDS needs next (Henrique Martins)

Nearly €200m, twenty years of EU health data projects. Henrique Martins on what they built and what EHDS needs next.

Before the European Health Data Space became law, the EU had already funded two decades of cross-border interoperability work: epSOS, EXPAND, Trillium Bridge, JAseHN, eHAction and more. Henrique Martins has worked on most of them. In this conversation he explains how those projects became MyHealth@EU, why the European EHR exchange format matters for every hospital and IT vendor, what digital health authorities and health data access bodies will do from 2027, and how far patient control of health data can realistically go. He also argues that Europe is not behind on cross-border exchange, that slow national progress is ultimately a political choice made by voters, and that 2027 will show whether the EHDS implementing acts can actually be applied.

GUEST

Henrique Martins — Associate Professor, ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon; coordinator, i2X (Intelligent Implementations of the European EHR Exchange Format); former President of SPMS, Portugal's national digital health agency; former Member States co-chair, EU eHealth Network

Host: Tjaša Zajc

WHAT THE CONVERSATION COVERS

What nearly €200m in EU interoperability funding bought over twenty years

How epSOS, EXPAND and OpenNCP became MyHealth@EU

Cross-border ePrescription and patient summary: who exchanges data today

The European EHR exchange format (EEHRxF) and why discharge reports still don't travel

Transformation layers: wrapping HL7 v2 messages in FHIR

AI and natural language processing to structure clinical data at the point of care

Trillium Bridge: EU–US patient data exchange, and why it couldn't be funded today

Xt-EHR and how joint actions shape the EHDS implementing acts

Digital health authorities vs health data access bodies: why one versus many

Patient rights under EHDS: access, download, correction and upload

Health data activism and patient health literacy

The xShare Yellow Button, MyHealth@MyHands and the EU Digital Identity Wallet

i2X: 35 pilots, 12 member states and 3 million citizens — and everyone else

Is Europe slow? Cross-border exchange compared with North America

The EHDS test for 2027: implementing acts and demonstration sites

CHAPTERS

03:00 Fifteen years of European interoperability projects 03:36 €200m over twenty years: what EU funding built 06:38 FHIR, implementation guides and the European exchange format 10:10 From drop-down menus to AI: structuring health data 10:48 epSOS, eHAction and the projects that shaped EU digital health 14:02 Trillium Bridge: when the EU and US exchanged health data 15:58 Xt-EHR and why joint actions shape the implementing acts 18:58 Digital health authorities and health data access bodies explained 23:13 Patients and EHDS: access, correction and health data activism 29:04 Is Europe too slow? 3 million in pilots, 400 million waiting 39:08 The best case for 2027: implementing acts that work

Recent FODH episodes on interoperability and EHDS: Herko Coomans on interoperability [ • Interoperability Isn't Failing — It's Unde... ] • Nils Hellrung on openEHR and EHDS [ • Just Connecting systems isn't interoperabi... ] • Karlien Hollanders, The Agentic Patient [ • "I stopped letting AI read my daughter's m... ]

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