The European Union within the Community Public Health Program 2003-2008 set down the objectives of establishing and operating a sustainable health monitoring system.
The system aims at producing comparable information on health and health-related behavior of the population, on disease and health systems. The system will continue the work of the previous community health programs and should be complementary to the activities of the Community Statistical Program and to work underway in Community agencies and in international organizations such as World Health Organization (WHO) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).