E-health is considered by many to be one of the most important revolutions in health care. E-health uses technology and telecommunications to deliver health information and services more effectively and efficiently than ever before. E-health has enormous potential to improve service delivery, reduce costs in caring for the ageing population, and address the inequity in providing care to remote communities.
Despite this potential, the uptake of e-health is varied. Slow adoption of e-health can be put down to:
– Funding challenges, and governance of healthcare services
– Resistance to changes in existing models of care
– Lack of credible research evidence on the benefits of e-health
– Costs and complexities associated with e-health implementation
– The unknown impacts on practitioners and consumers
– Concerns over privacy
These challenges can, and are, being addressed. The Australian government has heavily invested in the National e-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) to address integration and interoperability of health information, and are also focusing on care provision via a consumer directed care model.
For e-health managers, developing an e-health strategy in a period of significant change is an exciting but perplexing activity. Taking into account the barriers and challenges above, some of the key considerations in developing an e-health strategy are:
– Knowing the key objectives you wish to achieve with e-health. Your e-health strategy needs to align with your organisational strategic plan, have an approved business case, and have clear purpose, goals and KPI’s. Know exactly why you are doing it, the benefits you hope to gain from it, and the key risks involved.
– Ensuring the foundations are in place. Your e-health strategy needs to account for interoperability and integration with systems internal and external to your organisation. Ensure you take a standards approach to data and information exchange. Interoperability with referrers, service providers, hospitals, GPs, etc is critical.
– Define the scope of e-health. E-health can mean many things to many people. Make sure you define exactly what e-health is and is not. The definition and scope of e-health will vary from organisation to organisation, depending on capability, resources and what you are trying to achieve.
– Getting buy-in. Implementing e-health initiatives will have a much greater chance of success if you have buy-in from management, field staff and consumers/patients. Buy-in is achieved by getting all stakeholders to be part of the e-health story, eliciting input/feedback, education and training, communicating regularly, and remaining focussed.
Whilst there are many other considerations, the above points highlight areas that are critical to e-health strategic success. Developing and architecting the strategy to suit your organisations individual circumstances is the next step. More about that in a future post.
Ben Ward 