[3] Healthcare in the Information Society - the Regional Dimension

Developments in the area of health and healthcare are being driven by wider social changes - including a demographic shift to an ageing society and the rise of the wellness and leisure society. The Health industry is also currently driven by extensive research and development in the Life Sciences including biogenetics, human genome mapping and by the pharmaceutical industry. Within these wider trends the health industry and health services are seeing advancements in the quality and access to health services and information as a direct result of the application of new technologies.

The access and quality of health services are being improved through remote diagnoses and tele-medicine, for example, NHS Direct in the UK. Health services are also being improved through the increased access to health information through on-line services and web sites that provide a range of self-diagnosis manuals and other emergency and treatment information. The access to health information is benefiting both doctors and patients alike by reducing waiting lists and times and through improved co-operation between care-providers and hospitals through electronic data exchange.

There are limitations to the uptake and use of ICT applications for health services. In Europe the sale of medical aid and medicines via the internet is still small-scale, this is often due to the regulations monitoring and restricting the sale of medical goods due to the nature of the material (i.e. prescription drugs). Privacy of information is also a barrier and can be seen in the general public's scepticism with using smartcards, which stems form the opaque rules relating to access rights to different types of information. Additionally, the existence of a dedicated national electronic health network takes significant resources to develop. However, as illustrated in chart 1 below, the level of ICT use in health sector is rising, for example, in Denmark, all hospitals and 75% of GPs are connected to the internet.

Chart 1: Pervasiveness of computing in healthcare (ICT and healthcare focus)