INDICATORS

indicators and the development of data sources must be provided to Member States.
It is expected that the research and development work and the discussions will result
in country specific implementation plans providing guidance to the work in Member
States. Implementation will be supported by Joint Action for ECHIM affiliated experts
in all EU countries. In each country the responsibility for implementation proper lies
with national key persons.
The need for regional implementation in many Member States must be taken into
account by the project’s regional experts and in the guidelines for the use of indicators
in regions (ISARE project).
6.4. Developing the data flow and gathering of new indicators
To obtain practical results it is essential to reshape or create data sources in each Member
State, to retrieve the data, to create indicators and to transfer them to a central repository.
As long as there exists no EU-wide agreement and health monitoring system, these
processes must be simulated. Joint Action for ECHIM must take on the necessary tasks
in order to test the data and their sources as well as the transfer, analysis and dissemination
system. Therefore as part of the implementation and development process the major
tasks ahead are 1) to design the data flow (gathering, quality assurance, storage, analysis
and dissemination) from Member States to a central health monitoring capacity, 2) to
take into account existing arrangements in Member States, in EU bodies (Eurostat and
other DGs, European institutes, such as ECDC) and other international organisations
(OECD, WHO), 3) to carry out pilot tests of data flow with several Member States, 4)
to persuade and support Member States in applying the proposed design, binding central
EU activities with those in the Member States, 5) to retrieve the first newly implemented
indicators, 6) to present a tabulation and conclusions based on that tabulation and 7)
to continue to participate in the development and implementation of indicators. The
plan for the design of the data flow will be discussed in particular with DG SANCO,
Eurostat, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the R&D unit at THL. The plan
includes setting up a temporary server for testing the data flow, if necessary. This server
will be used to gather data from as many Member States as possible, to enable quality
assessments and, finally, to tabulate, analyse and publish the information on current and
new indicators. This work will result in a first extended Health Report for Europe.
The development phase, including data transfer and dissemination, must be kept
as streamlined as possible and remain in the control of the Joint Action, including
the Member States. Therefore, the Commission, i.e. DG SANCO and Eurostat,
will collaborate with Joint Action for ECHIM but will not be directly involved in
administering and running the development work. However, it is necessary to maintain
close collaboration with them. In the long run it is intended that a permanent EU
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