ECHIM Final Report

In order to create a simplified procedure for shortlist development, the following
steps are proposed. These will be co-ordinated by the ECHIM secretariat specifically
responsible for the development of the shortlist:
1. The secretariat will actively keep track of specific needs and problems in the current
shortlist as they emerge in policy documents and project reports, and initiate
contact with appropriate projects and networks to tackle these problems.
2. Around 2010, the secretariat will launch a query to the projects, via the Working
Parties (or similar co-ordinating structures), to solicit their suggestions for
improvements, additions or deletions, with explicit mention of the indicator
criteria and of the need to submit appropriate documentation.
3. The secretariat will make a qualified judgement of the suggestions and contributions,
taking into account the criteria and formal evaluation procedures for indicators.
Based on this, it will make a proposal to the ECHIM Core Group.
4. The agreement of the ECHIM Core Group will then be submitted to the Working
Party Indicators, or the equivalent body in place at that time.
3.5. Impact of the ECHI shortlist
The ECHI shortlist has become quite a central issue in organising health monitoring
and reporting within the EU. To keep things in perspective, it is useful to set out a few
considerations on the use and the impact of the shortlist.
1. There is life beyond the shortlist. Indicators not included in the shortlist are often
very valuable within their own field of use (cancer, health care quality, etc.). The
same applies to the underlying data collection.
2. There are related sets of indicators such as the WHO HfA, OECD Health Data, the
data collection under European Commission’s DG for Employment, Social Affairs
and Equal Opportunities (intimately “the Social Protection Committee”) by Open
Method of coordination (OMC), “structural indicators”, etc. While the structure
of the shortlist should be retained, it is important to be very pragmatic and explicit
about overlapping indicators and to share definitions and data collections, unless
there are good reasons to do otherwise.
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