Telemedicine - a challenge rather than solution for payers and service providers in EU

Abstract

Telemedicine a part of E-health fascinates both payers, Ministries of Health of all European Union (EU) states as well as service providers. But fascination does not correspond with uptake of solutions implemented in EU states. The major obstacle in broad adoption of such services is legislation. Not in all EU countries legislation allows proper implementation and reimbursement of the services. Today the most common limitations are associated with necessity of the presence of a health care worker and the patient in the same place and legal problems in terms of reimbursement for telemedicine services to providers. France, Italy and Spain have powerful examples of successful implementation of telemedicine services mainly telemonitoring. However numerous clinical studies have proven significant improvement in compliance in chronically ill patients but also improvement in disease-specific clinical outcomes including mortality.