A Philips-led consortium of leading companies, universities, hospitals and healthcare authorities has unveiled a ‘cookbook‘ for large-scale deployment of coordinated care and telehealth. The cookbook is the result from a two-and-a-half year scientific evaluation of data from different connected health programs in five European regions. It provides new insights that apply across the EU on why certain telehealth programs are more successful than others.
Connected care is seen by many governments as essential to enable more efficient, patient-centric and continuous care for the aging EU population; however, although many local connected care pilot programs are successful, they fail to scale and their potential impact is not fully leveraged.
Consortium Background
The consortium researched data from patients with COPD, diabetes and heart failure in programs in the Basque Country (Spain), Catalonia (Spain), Scotland (UK), North of the Netherlands, and Lombardy (Italy) and conducted 2,500 surveys and group interviews with participating patients and care providers.
The consortium found that the scalability of care coordination and telehealth is possible, but requires significant organizational change to successfully execute the process. It also unveiled critical areas in which progress is required in order to enable the transformation to more sustainable healthcare systems.
Connected Care Cookbook Overview
The cookbook advises that patients are assigned a single point of contact when enrolled in care coordination programs with several institutions and care providers to prevent them from feeling lost and diverging advices. Staff engagement is critical as in programs where staff understanding and engagement levels were high patient adherence was better compared to programs with lower engagement scores. Preventative care programs outperform reactive healthcare delivery. Improved standardization and interoperability within the European Union would enable benchmarking and leveraging successful programs beyond local pilots.
“Successful coordinated care and telehealth are principally about organizational change,” said Professor Stanton Newman of Health Psychology, School of Health Sciences, City University London, UK. “To achieve the best outcomes for patients, we need to review the way these organizations are structured and make sure everyone is aligned on the objectives and goals of integrating care coordination and telehealth into patient care pathways.”
The cookbook is available for download and more information can be found on the ACT Program’s website: http://www.act-programme.eu
The ACT consortium members include:
– Royal Philips
– Universitätsklinikum Würzburg, Germany
– Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
– Telbios, Italy
– UMC Groningen, The Netherlands
– Kronikgune, Spain
– Consorci Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer, Spain
– Agencia D’informació, Avaluació I Qualitat En Salut, Spain
– Servicio Vasco de Salud-Osakidetza, Spain
– NHS 24, Scotland, United Kingdom
– University of Hull, United Kingdom
– City University London, United Kingdom
– Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
And affiliate members:
Foundation Zorg Binnen Bereik (Care within Reach), Amersfoort, The Netherlands; Center of Technology in Medicine and Health (CTMH), Sweden; Basque healthcare technology provider (OSATEK ), Spain; Galicia Region (SERGAS), Spain; Saxonia Region,Germany.
