18 keys to success in implementing telemedicine
17 de juliol de 2014
The Momentum European project aims to prepare a guide for implementing telemedicine projects in Europe in order to facilitate the process from pilot experiences to small and large-scale deployments. To configure the telemedicine service implementation guide, four cases were analysed from Norway, Sweden, Israel and Catalonia, which reflected configurations of healthcare services in different public health systems.
From this analysis, 18 critical success factors were identified, which were set out into 4 large categories: strategy, organisation, legality and technology, which were defined in a preliminary document.
“Although it is not the final version, it may be the first practical guide to assessing a new telemedicine project,” says Tino Martí, health economist and project manager of TicSalut, who intervened at the presentation of the list in Athens in May, at the session “The secret of telemedicine.” The document in question includes the following 18 points:
STRATEGY
1. Checking whether the culture of the organisation or the healthcare system is ready for telemedicine.
2. Guaranteeing leadership with people committed to telemedicine.
3. Identifying an urgent need that can be resolved with a telemedicine service.
4. Gathering the necessary resources for implementation and sustainability.
ORGANISATION
5. Focusing on the needs of primary customer/s.
6. Involving health professionals and healthcare managers.
7. Preparing and implementing a business plan.
8. Preparing and implementing a plan for managing change.
9. Placing the patient at the centre of the telemedicine service.
LEGALITY, REGULATION AND SECURITY
10. Establishing which telemedicine services are legal.
11. Calling for advice from experts in laws, ethics, privacy and security.
12. Applying the necessary legal and security directives.
13. Ensuring that the professionals leading the telemedicine projects and the users are aware of privacy.
TECHNOLOGY
14. Ensuring that the necessary ICT and eHealth infrastructures are interoperable.
15. Guaranteeing that the technology might be usable and friendly for users.
16. Monitoring the service.
17. Maintaining good practices in commercial relations.
18. Guaranteeing that the technology has potential to expand the scale of implementation (or “thinking big”).
With the publication of these 18 points, Momentum invites those involved in implementing telemedicine in Europe to revise them in a public consultation. The platform has therefore opened lines of communication in the social networks, in LinkedIn and Facebook. They also ask the professionals interested in this public consultation to send them their comments and success cases by e-mail and to join the network and attend the physical meetings they organise.
“Telemedicine in Europe is suffering from ‘pilotitis’: there are many ICT projects that have received public or private subsidies for emerging companies that help them survive, but once the subsidy is finished, the project disappears,” says Marc Lange, the secretary general of EHTEL and the coordinator of the Momentum project. “These critical success factors will help entrepreneurs deploy their projects in habitual healthcare practices and expand their scale of implementation in order to benefit all European patients.”
These 18 critical success factors are now being refined with 3 new telemedicine experiences from Italy, Germany and Holland which answer solutions from private initiative. It is hoped that the final result of the project, which is expected to be published in December, might become a model for implementing telemedicine.
For further information and to receive the Momentum bulletin, visit www.telemedicine-momentum.eu.
