The Future of Telemedicine in Europe and Methods for the Evaluation of Health Services

Abstract

Despite the accumulation of evidence for the effects of approaches to chronic illness, methodological and analytical work is still needed to develop widely accepted evaluation methods that are scientifically sound and also practicable in routine settings. Given all the diversity and variability of disease management, a key issue for this work concerns the difficulties in establishing a useful “comparator” in settings where it is not practical or possible to execute an evaluation as a randomized controlled trial (RCT). This is indeed an important task because evaluation methods are a precondition to select efficient and effective programs, or components within a program that can address the growing burden of chronic and more in general health conditions. This is evident, in particular, when it comes to new technologies in medicine and implementation and evaluation, in the healthcare sectors, distinguishing low-income countries, on the one-hand, and those in other middle income countries.

Semi-Automatic Systems for Exchanging Health Information

“…In Europe, the efforts for the establishment of ICT services are in continuous progress. Today, most countries, governments or public authorities and municipalities try more in order to exist and operate the e-Health services for the better serving of their citizens (Paola Di, 2012). That happens because they offer more automation for everyday actions or other activities of the citizens.…”

“…The specialists and the other medical staff must offer valuable services to their patients from a distance and as soon as possible (immediately if they can do it). Moreover, the use of telemedicine encompasses a broad range of actions, from direct communicating with a doctor to emergency response, in real time (Ferrer-Roca et al, 1999;Paola Di, 2012;Pierrakos, 2008). That was made possible thanks to the effectiveness of ICT.…”

“…Cabinet Office, 2004;Thomas, 2012). For example, a form of electronic services that is widely offered to the citizens in the aforementioned countries in the field of health is remote medical services through telemedicine (Paola Di, 2012).…”

A Follow up to Semi-Automatic Systems for Exchanging Health Information

“…1. Telemedicine and eLearning technologies (Ferrer-Roca et al, 1999;Kristina et al, 2012;Paola Di, 2012;Pierrakos, 2008;Wayne et al, 2012) 2. "Virtual Medical Dossier" technologies (Apostolakis, 2011;Malamateniou et al, 2002Malamateniou et al, , 2003Siwicki, 1997;van Bemmel, 1999) 3.…”