Content

eHealth & Telemedicine

For many years the health systems in modern societies have been under increasing pressure due to economic and social change. Improved treatment methods often require more personnel-intensive care and are often more cost-intensive, and the share of chronically ill and very old people is increasing. The challenge is to reconcile higher quality and more innovations with the restrictions on expenditure in the health system. A targeted use of patient-oriented health telematics applications can help

to maintain and improve the quality of care,
to better coordinate patient care between the various providers in the health and social care sectors,
increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the health system.

Beginning with the world-wide first interactive, broad-band video service for seniors (HomeTeleService via CATV) empirica and its European partners have developed, carried out and evaluated a wide range of telemedicine application projects, especially in the home care and hospital areas. In each case empirica works closely with both service providers in the health and social care sector and technology companies. A key example is the internationally hailed prospective, randomised controlled telemedicine trial, the TEN-HMS project. In a clinical trial of over two years' duration in three countries a group of 426 high-risk cardiac insufficiency patients were looked after by 12 hospitals, specialists and GPs. In the telemonitoring treatment group patients used the telemetric recording and automatic transmission of their vital data. - On behalf of the European Commission and the German Federal Government empirica has also carried out strategic policy studies on the use of telecommunications media and services in the health system and organised a national dialogue (working group 7 "The Use of Telematics Applications in the Health System" of the German National Forum Info 2000) and international conferences.