How can eHealth improve care for people with multimorbidity in Europe? [Internet]

Excerpt

1. eHealth has the potential to improve care and offer new services for people with multimorbidity. It could allow providers and policy-makers to:

   1. ○ coordinate and integrate different elements of care better, by improving communication and the sharing of information between professionals and with patients through message systems or electronic EHRs;

   2. ○ support self-management through tools to provide feedback or check adherence to treatment;

   3. ○ improve clinicians’ decision-making and the quality of care through decision support systems (DSSs), which help share evidence on dealing with the complexities of multimorbidity;

   4. ○ monitor and analyse risk to identify the most complex cases and allow proactive responses;

   5. ○ improve access to health care services for people with multimorbidity in rural and deprived areas through telehealth services or mHealth applications.

2. eHealth is not yet a major component in most health systems. If it is to fulfil its potential, policy-makers need to address gaps in regulation and increase standardization in the national and European contexts. This means:

   1. ○ designing adequate legal and funding frameworks;

   2. ○ defining standards for and regulation on interoperability of eHealth solutions for remote consultation, monitoring and care;

   3. ○ fostering standardization of DSSs by care providers at the national level;

   4. ○ promoting new regulations and frameworks for mobile health solutions for self-management, resolving the uncertain legal status;

   5. ○ implementing personal health records that are accessible to patients;

   6. ○ refining and implementing a concrete road map for compatibility and standardization of EHRs, e-referrals, ePrescriptions and health information systems within and between EU Member States.

3. Concrete initiatives to extend professional and patient uptake might usefully include personal health records, DSSs and information systems for risk stratification.

4. Comprehensive training and educational campaigns will be important in improving the digital health literacy of patients, informal carers and care professionals.

5. Large-scale studies are needed to evaluate the impact of eHealth tools (rather than small-scale research, which cannot evaluate effectively).