SHARE, from vision to road map: technical steps.

We present the 'HealthGrid' initiative and briefly review work carried out in various European healthgrid projects. We report on joint work with numerous European collaborators. Since the European Commission's Information Society Technologies programme funded the first gridbased health and medical projects, the HealthGrid movement has flourished in Europe. Many projects have now been completed and 'HealthGrid' consulted a number of experts to compile and publish a 'White Paper' which establishes the foundations, potential scope and prospects of an approach to health informatics based on a grid infrastructure. With a second generation of projects now funded, the EC has commissioned the SHARE Project, a study to define a research roadmap for a 'healthgrid for Europe' as the preferred infrastructure for medical and health care projects in the European Research Area. The project explores the ways in which the healthgrid approach supports modern trends both in research in biomedicine and in healthcare, such as evidence-based practice and information integration.