Feasibility and opportunities of digital offers in the care of chronic neurological diseases using the example of a telemedicine-supported day clinic for Parkinson's disease and movement disorders

Abstract

Chronic diseases are steadily increasing as a result of demographic change and medical progress. Non-drug therapies and the provision of remedies are highly relevant in this context, but face an insufficient quantitative and qualitative supply situation. The digitalization of the healthcare industry is currently experiencing an upswing, driven by the Hospital Future Act [4] as well as by the relaxation of the ban on remote treatment by the 2018 Physicians' Congress [24],and most recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. Digitalization enables a redesign of treatment and care processes through telemedicine, digital health applications (DiGAS), the electronic prescription, tele-monitoring and patient portals. The present paper aims to work out opportunities, challenges of digital offers as well as necessities for the supporting use from the previous experiences of a telemedicine-supported day clinic for Parkinson's disease and movement disorders. These experiences and conceptual approaches give rise to new future-oriented treatment concepts that have enormous potential for complementing conventional therapy with digital offers in an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and patient-centered way individually and symptom-specifically.