The newly-founded Continua health alliance brings together companies from the ICT (software, hardware and networks) sector, medical and fitness device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. It sets out to "Foster independence through establishing a system of interoperable personal telehealth solutions that empower people and organizations to better manage health and wellness."
In concrete, the companies envisage a system of networked devices (blood pressure meters, scales, pill dosers, different kinds of sensors) in the household working smoothly together with adapted appliances in a doctor's or caretaker's cabinet - an "extension of healthcare systems into the home", as Continua Chairman David Whitlinger said. Health professionals would host software that analyses the data transferred and asks for closer examination in case of anomalies. Via a user-friendly computer, phone or even television-based interface, doctors and carers could get in contact with patients. The same kind of system could be used for monitoring by people who do not presently have a health problem - the 'worried well', as Continua calls them.
The alliance sees three major market segments for a wide-spread deployment of e-health systems:
- Monitoring patients suffering from long-term, chronic diseases and critical conditions. Nowadays, the majority of those people need in-patient treatment or at least regular visits at a doctor's cabinet. E-health could be a cost-cutting alternative, the industry argues.
- Preventive monitoring of senior citizens' health. In this case, the link would mainly be between elderly persons and their adult children, in particular so if they do not live in the same place. It could also include a family doctor or, if the person has already gone through a critical condition, specialist. In most of those cases, costs would have to be carried by the patients themselves.
- Monitoring and coaching fitness training. People doing ambitious sports training could contact their fitness consultant from wherever any of them is, go through their training and health data and discuss next steps online.
The alliance wants to foster the spread of e-health systems through:
- Open standards and interoperability. These are important to make sure that single companies don't dominate sub-sectors of the e-health market, which could potentially spoil the whole sector's growth potential. In particular Small and Medium-sized Enterprises depend on open standards to integrate with bigger companies' infrastructure.
- Certification. Devices respecting the standards and tying in with other compatible hardware and software will carry the Continua signet, as a signal to consumers and health professionals.
- A friendly regulatory environment. Some regulations already apply on health services in the US and the EU. Industry's interest is mostly that regulations across the world are harmonised in order to make technical modifications unnecessary when designing equipment for different destinations.
- Awareness raising with the public and policy makers; advocacy.
Questions that remain to be answered are:
- Financing. Monitoring chronically ill people could actually cut in on the considerably costs it causes nowadays an it could therefore be justified that the costs be carried by social security systems. Preventive monitoring would however have to be paid for by the patients themselves. It could therefore result in a two-tier preventive health system, separated along income lines.
- Accessibility and inclusion. Not every-one is computer-literate enough to deal even with the simple interfaces e-health appliances would have to have, and until now access to the internet is quite unevenly distributed throughout Europe. Dealing with the digital divide and e-inclusion are therefore essential for bringing the full benefits of such a system to all citizens.
- Privacy. People's health data is one of the most most sensitive kinds of personal data in existence. Secure encryption at all levels must therefore be implemented in e-health systems.
- Outsourcing. Part of the monitoring activities could technically be aoutsourced to lower-wage countries. This would make it difficult, however, to respect European regulatory standards, and it could result in pressure on wages in the health care sector.
