Interview: EU eHealth strategies 'not connected to reality'[fr][de] 

Instead, the group calls for the implementation of bottom-up integrated health and social care service delivery enabled by SMEs.

"The vast majority of EU countries have eHealth strategies but they are absolutely not connected to the healthcare delivery reality," said EHTEL President Dr. Martin Denz. Denz made the comments ahead of the annual EU eHealth conference  held on 6-7 May 2008 in Portoroz, Slovenia, where stakeholders sought to demonstrate achievements in the use of information and telecommunication solutions in health care.

According to Denz, the end of nineties saw a surge in different "e- and tele-" activities in health care, such as teleconsultation, monitoring and counselling as well as disease management. However, he says, "there is still no intention of changing structures or health care systems" nor a reflection on overall reorganisation of care.

"We need to gear up towards integrated service delivery," said Denz, explaining that elements of this new approach already exist and that a new health service industry, composed mainly of SMEs, is already contributing to the delivery of health and social care services. As the approach in eHealth until now has been both top-down and heavy IT industry-oriented, "we have completely missed out the SME part of the process," Denz claimed.

He also argued that if the aim is to deliver and enhance health rather than just cure diseases, additional social care activities need to be integrated into the delivery of health care, such as having food delivery or someone cleaning at home for elderly citizens. "This is at least as important, if not more important than [...] isolated medical action," said Denz, predicting a surge of new innovative business plans to do so, given that incentives to invest in innovation are created.

According to him, the new service delivery activities will be reimbursed by a mix of statutory reimbursement and others - either private or based on new models created following innovative business plans.

Referring to a recent EHTEL report on sustainable telemedicine, Denz said that even though the whole eHealth concept is "on track" and EU countries have "a lot of nice eHealth strategy papers" and "marvellous agenda setting," the current top-down approach is not connected to reality nor oriented towards the concrete implementation of telemedicine and telehealth activities on the ground. 

"eHealth is changing the management of healthcare systems by using ICT," says Denz, who called for a move towards providing health care based on the opportunities offered by eHealth infrastructure.

To read the interview in full, please click here.