E-health experiences in Spain: mapping and analysis

Abstract

E-health is form of health created to improve the health status of patients through Internet and other related technologies. It is an expanding concept being applied in lots of countries because of its benefits. With it, telemedicine is evolving. Telemedicine uses IT‟s to improve patient‟s outcomes with services such as diagnosis, treatments, prevention disease and so on. The objective of this document is to compare different projects being realised in Spain, and in particular, in the Catalonia Region. To do so, it introduces e-health, telemedicine and other related terms. It also describes the actual situation in Spain regarding these subjects. It provides a description of different telemedicine projects dealt in Catalonia and Spain, as well as a detailed and structured description of the project PALANTE and its pilots, specially the Spanish ones. It defines a taxonomy model to classify all the projects and the Spanish pilots so that they can be compared to view the differences between them, and the tendency that the telemedicine sector is heading to. The different resulting ideas that have been extracted are: There are projects that full monitor the patients with oximeters, sensors, spirometers…. This full monitoring is closed related to a service that tries to prevent a relapse from patients, which causes a reduction on the readmission of them. Several projects offer patients a virtual platform or portal to manage their health. This one should include (some ones already do) a drug intake schedule and an educational service. The latest projects developed are trying to give access to electronic health records (EHR) to their patients. The projects are trying to use ICT‟s to get a synchronous link between patients and health professionals.