The overall goal of the EU-USA ARGOS eHealth Pilot Project is to contribute to establishing a “Transatlantic Observatory for Meeting Global Health Policy Challenges through ICT-Enabled Solutions” in order to develop and promote “Common Methods for Responding to Global eHealth Challenges in the EU and the US”. The Observatory will promote mutual understanding and learning among EU and US policy researchers and policy makers on the following general challenges with global dimension:

1. Improving health and well-being of citizens through accelerating eHealth strategy development and through supporting large scale eHealth infrastructure implementations;
2. Supporting R&D in eHealth to promote the benefits from the pursuit of consistent strategies.

In the ARGOS eHealth project, the following specific target areas will be addressed:

• Interoperability in eHealth and certification of Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs);
• Definition of a common, consistent approach and identification of indicators and tools for measuring the adoption, usage and benefits of eHealth;
• Modelling and simulation of human physiology and diseases with a focus on the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) and the use of such solutions to support the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.

Key outputs for each of the three topics are:

• a comparative analysis of current US and EU approaches;
• workshops in the US and the EU involving the different stakeholder groups;
• interim reports and publications (Policy Briefs: one per target area, three separate brochures) documenting the subprojects’ findings and recommendations (in web- and printed version);
• the “ARGOS project finale” global conference.

empirica leads one of three work packages, concerned with “Definition of a common approach measuring the adoption, usage and benefits-costs of eHealth”. This work will involve the USA Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Harvard University, and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) as coordinator on the USA side.