Croatian Ministry of Health is organising two important events during the Croatian presidency of the Council of the EU in 2020: High level conference on organ donation and transplantation and e-Health Week.
The aim of the high level conference on organ donation and transplantation conference is to engage EU health ministers and national policymakers to:
- provide political support and strong commitment to further developing and strengthening the implementation of successful organ donation and transplantation programmes,
- exchange experience and discuss best approaches aimed at increasing the availability of organs for transplantation
- identify new challenges and priorities for joint action in this area of public health and agree on directions and models for further development
E-Health Week plans to place particular emphasis on taking measures related to actionable health data and secondary use of data by creating the space for European policy making and enabling and implementing uniform European health data standards for interoperability, security, practices for data collection, sharing and ethical processing.


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The main objective of this project is to set up the good practices applied to tissues and cells (T&C) preparation processes and patient follow-up procedures, to ensure their safe and effective implementation.
The outputs of this project will provide tools for assessing and verifying the quality, promote safety and assure efficacy of therapies with human tissues, Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC) and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), addressing mainly to the implementation of novel T&C preparation processes and clinical indications, but also to the need of retrospective studies where weaknesses or insufficient safety data currently exist.
Recommendations will be forwarded to Tissue Establishments (TE) and Organizations Responsible for Human Application (ORHA), as the main actors in the process of validation and designing T&C preparation processes and patient follow-up according to a clinical indication.
This project aim to define the threshold of novelty, including definition of the factors that should be considered to determine the scope and depth of the clinical follow-up studies needed. The scope and extent of the recommended studies will be determined on the basis of a risk based approach performed taking into account factors such as the novelty of the product/preparation process/clinical indication, and its technical complexity.
A T&C Database of products, preparation procedures, clinical applications and their current status of authorisation and implementation will be established, working as a starting point for determining the ‘novelty’ of processes/therapies by TEs and ORHAs, and allowing the use of established processes/therapies by any centre that strictly follows the same procedure/clinical procedure/indication.
This project also aims to define a “GTP’s management model” that could provide impetus for future standards harmonisation and promotion, and allow the establishment of European accreditation and training programs for TE.
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Organ transplantation (OT) is a consolidated therapy from which thousands of patients benefit in the EU. However, important variations in activity exist between Member States (MS).

ACCORD intends to strengthen the full potential of MS in this field and to improve cooperation between them.

With this general aim, ACCORD is focused on three specific areas as follows:
1. Developing live donor registries and fostering international data sharing on live donation.
2. Increasing the availability of organs from deceased donors by strengthening the cooperation between intensive care units (ICUs) and donor transplant coordinators (DTCs).
3. Promoting exchange of best practices and consolidated expertise in organ donation and transplantation through twinnings experiences.

Finally, ACCORD, as a whole, will facilitate the consistent implementation of the Directive across the whole Union, provide MS with concrete assistance in meeting the objectives of the Action Plan and enhance cooperation between MS.

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The main objective of the project is to develop and disseminate the guidelines for the organisation of future European Donation Day, elaborated by consultation of experts and considering the guidance of Council of Europe, the initiator of the main event.
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