Further to our announcement last July that EHFF was part of the winning consortium for this DG-SANCO tender on the promotion of self-care in minor and self-limiting conditions, which involves constructing guidelines related to promoting self-care in common conditions but also setting up a multi-stakeholder platform of experts to advise in this area on an ongoing basis, the project kicked-off in Brussels last September. The Consortium is led by CBO, Utrecht and EHFF is on the project steering group. The first few months involved, as a key task, setting up a proposed platform which would be approved by the Commission. There was a two month delay in delivering this, agreed on both sides, but on Mar.2 the approved platform met for the first time, with Commission officials in attendance.
For details of the project there is a good summary on the EPF website: http://www.eu-patient.eu/whatwedo/projects/pisce/
The platform which met for the day on Mar.2nd so that those who didn’t already know each other could meet face to face, comprises 25 individuals representing mostly relevant stake-holder representative organisations, 2 of the 25 being experts present as consultants.
The idea is that the platform will be consulted routinely during the course of the activity of the project Work-packages, will meet once more face to face, probably in September/October and will attend the closing Conference in Brussels where the results of the project will be discussed with an invited audience, around March 2016. The Commission will then decide how to use the platform subsequently.