ICT key to chronic disease management

Telemedicine and innovative ICT tools for chronic disease management will be key to delivering people-centred health care, according to participants in the annual EU eHealth event which took place last week. 

The annual EU eHealth 2008 conference, where stakeholders demonstrated achievements in the use of information and telecommunication solutions in health care, adopted a Portorož declaration as the basis for future work by the EU and its member countries in the field. 

With the declaration, adopted on 7 May 2008, the EU 27 and the Commission pledged to develop people-centred eHealth initiatives, providing Europeans with “smarter health environments” to deliver continuity of care and integrated health and social services.

It identifies three key initiatives that “must now begin to operate harmoniously alongside each other in order to overcome the major health challenges that lie ahead over the next ten-year period”. These include planning how to deploy telemedicine and innovative ICT tools for chronic disease management, more research and a transparent legal framework to define the responsibilities of all parties involved in the eHealth process.

The Commission is already drafting a Communication on telemedicine and innovative technologies for chronic disease management, which it plans to publish before the end of 2008. The aim is to help the EU 27 to identify and address possible barriers to the wider deployment of telemedicine – the delivery of care at distance – and to coordinate national efforts.

A recent stakeholder report by the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) argues that the reasons for current delays in wider use of telemedicine include long test phases for both EU and nationally funded telemedicine pilot projects, unproven returns on investment and the lack of reimbursement schemes for telemedicine by health insurance schemes. 

However, the association notes that a “new type of health service industry,” composed mainly of SMEs and “new innovative health service professionals” is already emerging in Europe, seeking “to combine high medical quality with entrepreneurship and sound business understanding”. 

eHealth has been identified as one of the six areas in which the EU aims to create innovation-friendly markets for businesses to launch new products and services (see EURACTIV 07/01/08). 

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