Label2Enable: Horizon Europe enables EU quality label for health and wellness app
On June 1, 2022, Horizon Europe project ‘Label2Enable’ will start. Fourteen organisations from seven countries (Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Spain) will join forces for two years to promote the ISO/TS 82304-2 health app assessment framework and label in Europe. An ageing population and a rise in chronic disease are putting more and more pressure on health budgets in Europe. The quality and accessibility of healthcare services are unequal, with an increasing shortage of healthcare professionals available. There is growing recognition that health apps can strengthen healthcare, self-management, and disease prevention.
Research shows, for example, that apps embedded in care can promote a healthier lifestyle, provide more disease insight, decrease the symptom burden, decrease hospital admissions, provide more efficiency and achieve a longer life. However, referrers and users currently lack information they need to determine the quality and reliability of health apps, this acts as a barrier. App manufacturers experience the varying national approval processes as confusing, it is unclear as to what is expected and the depth of evidence that is required by each approval body. In 2021, ‘ISO/TS 82304-2 -health and wellness apps -quality and reliability ’was published. The Label2Enable project uses the golden opportunity of ISO/TS 82304-2 and its health app quality label to break through the impasse and promote broad use and ditto supply of quality health apps.
EuroHealthNet is involved in the testing process of the app label, ensuring the assessment considers health inequalities and the determinants of health to achieve the threefold objective of Label2Enable: to achieve trust, use and adoption, to pave the ground to communicate the quality and reliability of health apps across the EU.
