Is eHealth facilitating better healthcare across Europe?From improved quality and better access to care without the unnecessary public expenditure, information and communication technologies (ICT) can greatly benefit all aspects of delivering efficient and high quality healthcare services.
The eHealth IMPACT (eHI) study dared to attempt the challenging task of measuring the economic impact of effective eHealth solutions on all stakeholders, and in particular the financial and non-financial benefits.
eHealth IMPACT developed a generic method for economic evaluation of eHealth solutions. It is a context adaptive model, so it fits a wide diversity of applications, such as clinical settings or supply chain solutions. The model relies on the concepts of cost-benefit analysis. Costs include the initial and continuous eHealth investments, like ICT and change management, as well as relevant healthcare running costs. Special attention has been paid to identifying the benefits to, and impact on, citizens. At the same time, benefits to all potential stakeholders are analysed. The concept of costavoidance is important in identifying benefits. This is the cost for achieving the ICT-based performance without ICT - which can often be prohibitive. The method focuses on measuring net economic gains as the difference between the economic value of direct benefits and identified costs; eHealth utilisation, defined as the usage of the service supported by ICT; and productivity.
Ten selected eHealth application sites were evaluated in great detail to test and refine the eHI method. Applications included inter alia electronic patient records in a hospital, a nation-wide medical record system for citizens and health provider organisations, ePrescribing, a vaccination support system, a dispatch service for ambulances, or a nationwide online information and support service for citizens, patients and physicians.
Real benefits demonstrated by the end of the project
The results show the potential of eHealth to help address the challenge of meeting an increasing demand for health services with a restricted scope for increase in resources. Both the summary report and the detailed case studies are available on the project website www.ehealth-impact.org, and include lessons learned that can make the learning curve for future successful implementations steeper.
Opportunities and Challenges for eHealth
Ms Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, presented on October 11th the publication of the eHealth IMPACT study results, âeHealth is Worth it: The economic benefits of implemented eHealth solutions at ten European sitesâ to the Brussels Roundtable (BRT) â a meeting gathering major European ICT companies together with Representatives of Regions to discuss opportunities and challenges for eHealth deployment in European regions. Further, results were presented at the World of Health IT conference (www.worldofhealthit.org) in Geneva (10-13 October).
At the Royal Society of Medicine TeleMed & eHealth '06 International Conference in London, 20-21 November (eHealthNews.EU Portal - TeleMed & eHealth â06), a plenary lecture, together with contributions to two parallel sessions are devoted to particular cases and overall results from the eHealth IMPACT study.
The method has already been applied to new cases, and the project team continues to further refine its empirical measurement tools.
Project website:
www.ehealth-impact.org
Project overview:
http://www.empirica.biz/empirica/
projekte/laufende-details_en.htm#ehealthimpact
IST Results feature:
http://istresults.cordis.europa.eu/index.cfm/section/
news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/88642
"eHealth is Worth it" publication:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/
activities/health/docs/publications/ehealthimpactsept2006.pdf
"eHealth is Worth it" press packs:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/
newsroom/cf/itemlongdetail.cfm?item_id=2892
For further information, please contact:
ICT for Health
European Commission - Information Society and Media DG
Office: BU31 06/73 B-1049 Brussels
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel: +32 2 296 41 94
Fax: +32 2 296 01 81
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/
activities/health/index_en.htm