SHARE road map for HealthGrids: methodology.

The SHARE11SHARE was a European Union Framework Programme 6 Information Society Technologies Specific Support Action, project identifier FP6-2005-IST-027694. Its principal deliverable, the integrated road map for healthgrids is at http://eu-share.org/about-share/deliverables-and-documents.html. project (http://www.eu-share.org) was asked to identify the key developments needed to achieve wide adoption and deployment of HealthGrids throughout Europe. The project was asked to organise these as milestones on a road map, so that all technical advances, social actions, economic investments and ethical or legal initiatives necessary for HealthGrids would be seen together in a single coherent document. The full road map includes an extensive analysis of several case studies exploring their technical requirements, full discussion of the ethical, legal, social and economic issues which may impede early deployment, and concludes with an attempt to reconcile the tensions between technological developments and regulatory frameworks. This paper has been restricted to the technical aspects of the project.