eHealth in the European Union – Comparative Study

Abstract

eHealth is one of the global modern trends in IT, medicine and politics. It is a broad term that refers to electronization of healthcare and health services and mainly describes the use of information and communication technologies in healthcare. In practice, the evaluation of eHealth is an important matter because it leads to selection of appropriate measures for further progress in the field of electronic healthcare. What is more, it proposes recommendations for the development of eHealth in the EU countries. The article is focused on the comparison of eHealth implementation in the European Union member states. The analysis is performed by means of ELECTRE III method. The results of the empirical research further evaluate the state of eHealth implementation in all European Union member states by selected criteria and enable the comparison of the eHealth implementation in the international context. The results are verified by application of MAPPAC method. It has been acknowledged that the best ranking countries in this area has been obtained by Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Sweden.