eHealth Interop, also called Mandate 403 (www.ehealth-interop.eu ) addresses the requirements of the European Commission mandate to the European Standards Organisations (ESOs) on standardisation in the field of e-health. This mandate (M/403) aims to provide a consistent set of standards to address the needs of this rapidly-evolving field for the benefit of future healthcare provision.

With eHealth Interop, the European Commission and governments recognize the barrier to interoperability is not a question of creating more standards for IT, but encouraging agreement on which existing standards should be adopted to assure interoperability between health IT systems.

The implementation of the recommended eHealth interoperability process would result in a set of profiles easier to adopt in various eHealth projects across Europe. It may also include the definition and development of testing tools and the organization of testing events similar to the IHE-Europe Connectathon.

At the request of the Commission, organizations that included European Committee for Standardization (CEN), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) will define this process to achieve effective interoperability for specific use cases.
With a strong experience integrating existing standards for specific use profiles, IHE-Europe can make a solid contribution to this pan-European effort.

- Current Status
The final report to M403 Phase 1 has been approved by the three European Standardisation Organisations and the European Commission in 2009.

The eHealth-Interop Report proposed to organise activities in support of five processes that would accelerate a European-wide coordinated interoperability standards adoption in health:
(1)    use case definition and prioritization
(2)    standards development
(3)    profile development and maintenance
(4)    profile quality assurance test plans and tools
(5)    sharing of best practices in deploying eHealth projects
On 11th February 2009, a Workshop was organized for a number of major stakeholders to discuss the recommendations of the report to Phase 1 and to prepare proposals for Phase 2.  The launch of Phase 2 is waiting for an EU Commission decision.