Evaluating care coordination and TeleHealth services across Europe through the ACT programme

Abstract

This paper presents the main concepts and ideas of the research program ACT (Advancing Care Coordination & TeleHealth Deployment). ACT focuses on studying Coordinated Care (CC) and TeleHealth (TH) services for chronically ill patients, such as heart failure, COPD, diabetes, as well as co-morbid patients. The potential of these services to improve quality of care within European healthcare systems can be fully released only when certain barriers are overcome and organizational changes progress. Therefore, the purpose of ACT, as described in this work, is to study in a qualitative and quantitative manner, with a solid and reproducible research methodology, the organizational and structural procedures supporting effective implementation of CC&TH services in the routine management of chronic patients. The consortium will investigate key organizational and structural drivers in 5 European healthcare regions, and eventually produce a toolkit for use across Europe. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.