E-Health initiatives rest on broadband infrastructure
Government health departments are commonly among the principal recipients of tax revenue. Some countries manage their budgets well (in Europe, France and Scandinavia generally come to mind) while others appear to be chronically underfunded and mismanaged (think of Britain’s NHS, where layers of managers soak up a disproportionate share of funds to the detriment of real patient services).
The provision of health care is similar to the provision of government pensions – it is an enormous Ponzi scheme based on the premise that current tax revenue pays for commitments made to earlier generations as they in turn had paid in to government health and pension plans. As the population ages, and lives longer, the Ponzi scheme is unravelling, and governments across the region are now faced with mounting and unsustainable bills while health care suffers and pensions are frozen. This makes for a disaffected citizenry.
One of the many solutions to ameliorate this mess – at least in the field of healthcare – can be provided by fast national broadband networks. Although technological advances will play their part, implementing national e-health systems also requires sectoral reform. Thus the NHS, for example, must where practicable replace its policy of face-to-face meetings between patients and doctors with pragmatic and effective home monitoring, thus cutting costs in labour and travel, and freeing up hospital beds and surgery space.
Governments do not have a monopoly on health reform. A number of initiatives have been instigated by telcos as the operators of broadband infrastructure on which future health services will increasingly depend. Telefonica, with operations across Europe and South America and which participates in over 80 projects in the e-health segment, is a case in point. The company has launched a global e-health unit to promote and manage clinical processes and remote access to services. The intention is to deploy ICT more effectively, and thus reduce the time spent by medicos on administration, optimise available resources and improve overall productivity.
The unit is based on Telefonica’s existing Spanish schemes, such as those started in Granada in 2005, and relies on converging communications and web services, while patients pay for the services used. Of course, Telefonica is also piloting LTE domestically and in its other European markets (notably the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic), and has already recorded speeds for video-conferencing and data downloads of more than 140Mb/s. Given the potential capacity of mobile broadband during the next few years, technology in the form of health-focussed mobile apps will open up a new and exciting avenue for e-health, based not on PCs as at present, but potentially in a device in anyone’s pocket, anywhere.
For more information on the infrastructure and the e-health markets, see:
Europe – Mobile Market – Mobile Data;
Europe – Infrastructure – FttH & NGNs;
Spain – Broadband Market – Overview, Statistics and Forecasts;
Digital Economy – E-Health;
Global Digital Economy – E-Government, E-Health and E-Education Trends.
