Introduction
 

ECHIM was a three-year project to develop and implement health indicators and health monitoring in the EU and all EU Member States. It continued the work of the previous ECHI and ECHIM projects, and ended on 30.6.2012. ECHIM was funded by the European Union Second Programme of Community Action in the Field of Health 2008–2013 through the Joint Action.

Most of the practical work was carried out by the central secretariat in Helsinki (THL) and by the other four secretariats in Berlin (RKI), Bilthoven (RIVM), Rome (ISS) and Vilnius (LSIC). The collaborating partners were from Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and WHO. The ECHIM Core Group consisted of more than 30 people in total.

Even though the project has ended, this website is kept up as an archive of important ECHIM products, most notably the ECHI shortlist of 88 indicators and their metadata, and the three-volume Final Report.

The ECHI Transition Network has been started by a consortium of former ECHIM partners. At the end of the ECHIM Joint Action in June 2012, quite a few Member States had started using the ECHI indicator system in data collection and reporting, or had plans to do so in the near future. The support from DG SANCO, however, has been discontinued until the results of a formal evaluation of the implementation status of ECHI Indicators in the Member States will be available. The ECHI Transition Network intends to bridge this gap, mainly by means of maintaining communication.