Health Industry Insights, an IDC company, announced the release of a new report which identifies Western European Healthcare top 10 predictions for 2007. Among the predictions, Health Industry Insights' European team foresees a long-term shift to transform service delivery to a patient-centric model, where prevention of acute episodes is part of patient every-day lives at home, and patients act as gatekeepers to national consolidated electronic health records. "It is common knowledge that the number of people over 65 will increase dramatically in Western Europe and they will be eager spenders in healthcare services," says Max Claps, program manager at Health Industry Insights' European office and author of the report. "The transformation to personalized home care is dramatic socially, economically, and culturally for patients, care professionals and all other stakeholders like governments, private insurance payers, and employers. Therefore, we don't expect the transformation to occur at the same pace in all Western European countries."
In his report, Claps identifies how soon he expects the transition to happen across Western Europe. He predicts that Northern Europe is ripe for the transition toward home care, because of cultural heritage, more centralized political decision making (e.g., in the UK) and geographical conditions (e.g., dispersed population in Scandinavian countries). On the other hand, Claps finds that Southern Europe will undergo a slower transition because of cultural and socio-economic conditions, and, in 2007, will step toward a community model where walk-in-centers, general practices, specialists and social workers will act as networks of carers for local citizens. According to Claps' report, no country will fully crystallize toward either home care or primary-community care, but the old framework, centered on mammoth acute care hospitals, will be forced to retire.
"The bad news, which is now clear to everyone, is that the traditional healthcare service paradigm cannot be sustained in the long-term," continues Max Claps. "The good news is that there is room for improvements. In fact, we're finding that healthcare IT executives, in countries like Germany and the UK, plan to significantly increase their invest in telemedicine and disease management over the next 12 months."
Other top 10 predictions for Europe, highlighted in Claps' report, include the following:
- Primary and community care will be the intermediate step toward full personalization of care
- Regional health information networks will open the path for national electronic health records
- Wider agreement on standard architectures will support data sharing
- Compliance and accountability requirements will drive investments in data collection and analysis tools for risk management
- Privacy protection requirements will drive investments in IT security
In a separate report published last year, IDC and Health Industry Insights forecasts the healthcare sector to be the fastest growing vertical in terms of IT spending in Western Europe, with 5.8% compound annual growth rate between 2006 and 2010 against 4.4% average of all other industries.
Health Industry Insights, an IDC company, provides health and life sciences industry executives, and the suppliers who serve them, with market research and advisory services. The company's integrated coverage spans the entire health industry value chain and closely follows the payer, provider and life science segments, with special emphasis on developing and employing strategies that leverage IT investments to maximize organizational performance. Staffed by senior analysts with extensive industry experience, Health Industry Insights provides a portfolio of offerings that are relevant to both IT and business needs. Visit www.healthindustry-insights.com for more information.