Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Health

Rapidly changing demands on Europe’s healthcare providers mean that there is an absolute necessity to innovate. These changes stem from demographic shifts, from technological advances and from new patterns of disease and lifestyle.

Among the most vivid changes is the average European longevity. By 2050, a third of Europe’s population will be over 60, an increase of 44% over 2006. The number of people over the age of 80 will increase by 180%. This means that the cost and time spent caring for the continent’s elderly population will increase exponentially.

Conditions such as dementia, fractured hips, strokes and cancer are likely to become more common, although improvements in lifestyles and greater use of new, safe and effective pharmaceuticals should lead to a “compression of morbidity” – where people are ill for shorter times before they die.

Other factors to cause an increase in certain conditions include unhealthy diets, contributing to heart disease, while climate change is forecast to cause increasing cold- and heat-related deaths, skin cancer and water-borne diseases. Up to 12% of European hospital patients currently suffer from additional ill health as a result of their stay (from conditions such as MRSA).

Prime among the innovations being promoted by the European Union is harnessing the power of new technology to improve healthcare. A series of initiatives have been underway in recent years, bringing greater co-ordination to European healthcare, saving time for patients and professionals and delivering a higher standard of care.

The “eHealth” programme applies information and communication technologies to healthcare, by converting paper records to electronic ones, making these records available to a variety of healthcare providers, whether general practitioners, hospitals or pharmacies.

In practical terms, eHealth allows patients to have consultations with hospital-based specialists over a video link, for example. It permits X-rays and magnetic resonance images to be transmitted electronically for assessment by specialists. It means that patients can assess their own conditions from home, measuring their blood-sugar levels, for example.

Importantly, eHealth gives individuals the tools to monitor their own health. It brings greater visibility of medical information for clinicians, so that they can keep up with developments in their fields, together with decision-making support and search tools to apply their knowledge.

By increasing the amount of healthcare that can be conducted at home, or at local clinics, eHealth programmes should gradually reduce the burden on hospital-based services, meaning that patients need to make fewer and shorter journeys, and expose themselves to fewer infections.

In November 2008, the European Commission published Telemedicine for the Benefit of Patients, Healthcare Systems and Society, setting out a range of benefits that information and communication technology will bring. In many cases, patients no longer need to be in the same location as healthcare professionals. Medical data can be transmitted through electronic means to aid prevention, treatment and diagnosis, along with follow-up services for patients.

For example, patients with chronic heart conditions can be monitored at home for early symptoms of aggravation. Timely treatment can then be provided. Patients with diabetes in remote parts of the EU can have regular eye checks, preventing the need for them to travel long distances. And hospital radiotherapy departments can cope more easily with peaks in activity, by sending radiographs offsite for interpretation.

The initiatives have received strong backing from EU commissioners such as Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Society and Media. “Telemedicine can radically improve chronically ill patients’ quality of life and give people access to top medical expertise,” she said at the launch of the Telemedicine publication.

Adopting and encouraging innovative healthcare treatments brings economic benefits to the EU, as these new developments provide employment opportunities and can be exported around the world. As a European Commission representative put it: “By acting as technologically demanding first buyers of new research and development, public procurers can drive innovation. This is key for Europe to create growth and jobs in quickly evolving markets such as ICT.”

The future of European healthcare financing is a matter of sustained debate, just as the US healthcare finance system has been under intense scrutiny in recent years. While different European countries deal with healthcare spending in different ways, there are pan- European projects and organisations dedicated to improving the way that money is spent, to improve standards of healthcare and gain the maximum advantage from new research.

The European Health Technology Institute for Socio- Economic Research (EHTI) measures the value of medical technology, through research, to determine how Europeans can best access modern and effective medical technology innovations, reduce mortality and increase quality of life. For example, the Institute has reported on how financing systems affect the adoption rate of technological innovations. Other reports have stressed the socio-economic benefits of improved healthcare – such as using coronary stents in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. In other words, healthier people are more productive and cost less to treat.

David Nicholson