Currently the full potential of ICT in the health sector is not yet realised. For example, the electronic patient record (EPR) has not yet fulfilled all expectations and is implemented to various degrees across European health systems. Interoperability and standardisation, although well recognised as key issues to be solved, are facing problems to which NESSI services could provide efficient solutions. This situation is common to almost all areas of applications of ICT standardisation in healthcare.

Moreover, the main activity in the e-health field has to solve issues such as learning how to handle health information for patient-centred integrated models within the digital networks, to share solutions and needs with other non-health applications, in particular, those related to social development _ easing the access to e-health services to optimise the ratio of expected and perceived benefits against access pervasiveness. This in turn leads to highlighting two related issues that are central to NESSI: how to take advantage of Ambient Intelligence technologies; and how to use technology effectively so that it "disappears", overcoming the difficulties and intrusiveness perceived by the users of current e-health services.

ICT application in the healthcare sector is a huge and promising sector in which extensive research has already been done, but in which the advances in terms of real deployment and permeation of the healthcare systems have been more limited. This is a complex situation that requires a different approach, that of universal and pervasive access to the services with appropriate quality in the context of contained costs and total security, supported by a technology that is as invisible and collaborative as possible  (exploiting the disappearing technology and ambient intelligence paradigms).

The e-Health working group, the first vertical domain and application working group within the NESSI ETP, will build on and test NESSI’s sector-independent approach.