eHealth applications have a growing role in Europe's hospitals, according to the survey but there are still wide variations in take-up, with Nordic countries taking the lead. Large, public and university hospitals are generally more advanced in eHealth terms than smaller, private ones. The survey data was collected from 906 general public, private or university hospitals. The survey was carried out in 2010 in all 27 EU Member States, plus Croatia, Iceland, and Norway.
Encouraging eHealth deployment in hospitals
The survey shows that in general public, private and university hospitals in Europe are taking advantage of eHealth technologies to a greater or lesser extent:
- 92% are connected to broadband and 41% of them have broadband speed of at least 50Mbps
- 81% have one or more electronic patient records systems in place
- 71% use online eBooking systems for patients' appointments with medical staff
- 65% have a common patient record system and 61% have an IT-based archiving and communication system
- 43% exchange radiology reports electronically
- 39% use videoconferencing (mainly for consultations between internal medical staff and external specialists).
More services required for patients
The survey shows that services for patients, such as ePrescription, telemonitoring or access to patient records are not widely available in all EU hospitals:
- 54% have WiFi
- 30% use ePrescription for medicines
- only 8% offer patients the opportunity to book their own hospital appointment online
- 8% telemonitor patients at home
- 5% have some form of electronic exchange of clinical care information with healthcare providers in other EU countries
A first set of benchmarking on the use of ICT by general practitioners was published in 2008.
For more information:
The survey's final report and related annexes are available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/item-detail-dae.cfm?item_id=6952
Digital Agenda website:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm
Neelie Kroes' website:
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/
Website of European Commissioner for Health John Dalli:
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/dalli/index_en.htm