The e-health or telehealth services cover different instruments which rely on information and communication technology to facilitate and improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment and medical follow-up as well as health management and lifestyle. The m-health covers a range of services from well-being to health and whose use is made continually accessible via mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. The e-patients are the consumers and patients of e-health or m-health.
Officially founded last September 28, 59 French e-health start-ups have recently announced that they will join together in an association: France eHealthTech. This consolidation aims to develop the sector, by sharing networks and experience in order to have an effect on the highest levels and to help give rise to French leaders in a sector that is rapidly evolving thanks to technical progress and digital technology. The “online body” and the digitalization of the relation between the patient and the care-giver are only at their early stages.
France’s eHealthTech’s “objective is to federate the e-health and well-being sector in France: web platforms, social health networks, mobile devices, digital conversational interfaces. Then to federate intermediate size business, larger groups, research and competitive poles, clusters, financial players, professional health representatives, patients and users who intervene in e-health within an ecosystem which allows the creation of an international industrial sector.”
France eHealthTech assumes its’ role as a « lobby ». The association has notably been consulted in the framework of the Health law or the future Macron II Law, and campaigns for opening up public health data to foster data saving and the emergence of new services. It undertakes on “a two-fold goal: to encourage and allow the growth of French e-health and to make the e-health of today, the health of tomorrow.”
