The findings of a report recently published by the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) is presented at the eHealth High Level Conference in Portoroz, Slovenia 6-7 May 2008. "Sustainable Telemedicine: paradigms for future-proof healthcare" presents the current achievements and best practice examples drawn from a number of either on-going or completed pilot projects across Europe. Based on the achievements, EHTEL sets out a number of recommendations for achieving sustainable telemedicine services in Europe by 2020.
These include:
- facilitating change in everyday operations for health care professionals and patients;
- using patient-centred telemedicine to involve and engage professionals and patients in the overall eHealth strategy;
- establishing a culture of interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration between different specialised medical fields;
- formulating explicit national strategies, scenarios and business models for sustainable telemedicine;
- establishing a European support framework to coordinate progress and future deployment of sustainable telemedicine.
EHTEL believes that we will encounter an historic turning point for eHealthcare in the upcoming years. While over the past years sophisticated eHealth infrastructures with health cards and highly secure networks are spreading all over the place, current e-services like reimbursement and Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions are useful but far from becoming eHealth killer applications.
As part of a sustainable health and social care in an ageing European society, EHTEL also believes that a new type of health service industry, composed mainly of public and private sector SMEs is emerging in Europe. This emerging industry and new innovative health service professionals are to focus on high medical quality for premium health services with special emphasis on quality of life for citizens and patients.
"I believe that SMEs have a major role to play in supporting the delivery of future health care through pro¬vision of care at home. This emerging industry will not only have an enormous positive impact on the quality of chronically ill patients and elderly people but also alleviate pressure on national health systems and boost European economy by creating possibly millions of new jobs. This will not only directly contribute to the EU's Lisbon agenda goals of creating more jobs and growth, but also to the implementation of the block's Lead Market Initiative on creating innovative solutions for public services," said EHTEL President Martin D. Denz.
This new breed of health service provider is positioned somewhere between traditional health professionals and the IT industry and seeks to combine high medical quality with entrepreneurship and sound business understanding.
"We are facing a dramatic increase of demand for our telemedicine services. In particular health insurance providers are seizing the occasion to support better and more efficient healthcare through embedding our integrated telemonitoring services for persons with cardiac risks and chronic diseases into their portfolios. Hence the usefulness and sustainability of our services is increasingly recognised," said Professor Harald Korb, Chief Medical Officer of vitaphone, a pioneering German company already in the business.
A further description of this emerging Telemedicine service industry will be outlined by Martin Denz, president of EHTEL, in the eHealth High Level Conference on 6-7 May 2008.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.ehtel.org
About EHTEL
EHTEL (The European Health Telematics Association) was founded in 1999 as is a membership driven European association. Representing approximately 100 organisations and individuals in 30 countries in Europe and beyond who are key actors in the field of ehealth, EHTEL members include healthcare authorities & government services, healthcare professionals, patients, citizens and consumers associations; industry groups, insurers, international and national not-for-profit associations, researchers, and independent consultants.
EHTEL provides a platform to all European eHealth stakeholders in order to exchange information, to identify challenges and find solutions towards realising its goals of promoting eHealth tools to improve the quality of health for patients and citizens, access to services, efficiency of care and cost effectiveness.
EHTEL provides a number of communications services to its members, actively advocates on the above issues towards public institutions and works through established task forces to achieve these goals. For more information on EHTEL visit www.ehtel.org.
About Sustainable Telemedicine: paradigms for future-proof healthcare
The report provides for politicians, healthcare professionals, providers and insurers as well as other stakeholders a snapshot of the state of the art of European, national and regional level progress towards sustainable telemedicine services. A detailed description of existing pilot projects is annexed to the report for the information of EHTEL members and for media inquiries.
Telemedicine is about interaction between either a patient and a health professional or between two or more health professionals without direct physical contact. It boasts a long history in the provision of medical care over a distance starting from telephone and video consultations. Today most of the medical specialties have a "tele"-sister, like teleradiology (the most frequent usage), telepathology, teledermatology and many more.
Whereas in the past, the majority of consultations only indirectly involved patients, i.e. were D2D (doctor-to-doctor) encounters, services directly offered to patients (D2P, doctor-to-patient) are very quickly emerging today. Those services might be embedded in a case management programme, like telemonitoring supported by a telemedicine service centre provided medical expertise or offered via health portals. As a parallel and stable stream also niche acctivities exist in aviation, maritime, space, defence and disasters settings, where teleconsultation and remote monitoring are often the only option to establish a patient encounter with a general practitioner or medical specialist.
The current paradigm shift in telemedicine is expected to respond to increasing demand for health and social care due to an increasing number of chronic patients suffering from for example chronic heart failure or diabetes. It is also seen as major contributor to supporting the quality of life of elderly people living at home.
However, nation-wide use of telemedicine services is currently delayed due to long testing phase of both EU and nationally funded telemedicine pilot projects. Lengthy pilot phases are due to the lack of a global vision of the role of eHealth in the transformation process of healthcare and the lack of, until recently appropriate and ready to use interoperable and secure - communication infrastructures, poorly documented and unproven return on investment models, the unclear and restrictive legal environment and most particularly the lack of reimbursement schemes for telemedicine by statutory as well as private health insurance schemes.