e-Health

At the beginning of August 2019, North Rhine-Westphalia presented the plans for “Virtual Hospital,” a digital platform that will bundle specialist expertise nationwide and make it more accessible.

A positive conclusion regarding the model project “Rhineland-Palatinate breathes through - telemedicine for healthy lungs” (“Rheinland-Pfalz atmet durch – Telemedizin für eine gesunde Lunge”) was drawn by the Mainz Ministry of Health.

National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (INAMI) is currently developing a framework for the reimbursement of telemedicine and health apps (mHealth).

The draft for a “Digital Supply Law,” approved by the Cabinet on July 10, 2019, promotes digitization in the health sector. Among other things, the law should help to accelerate the integration of digital applications into the standard care, to further develop and promote the use of the electronic patient record (ePA), to strengthen telemedicine and to connect more actors to the telematics infrastructure.

Zorg van Nu information team published a brochure with regulations for stimulating digital care in the Netherlands. The brochure with the description of 16 schemes clearly explains which regulations are applicable for which e-health innovations.

NHSX has officially launched in July 2019 bringing together teams from the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and NHS Improvement, to lead the largest digital health and social care transformation program in the world. With an investment of more than £1 billion pounds a year nationally and a significant additional spend locally, NHSX has been created to give staff and citizens the technology they need.

After having identified the eligibility conditions for teleconsultation and teleexpertise in 2018, the French High Authority for Health (HAS) published a series of documents in late June 2019, for the operational deployment of eHealth services. Each of the new modalities of practice is discussed: teleconsultation, teleexpertise, and teleimaging. Also, the HAS proposed an information document to be given to patients before a teleconsultation.

In March 2019, NICE published an updated version of its evidence standards framework for digital health technologies (DHTs) that sets out the evidence requirements for different types of DHTs.

HealthTech Connect, a new online resource provided by NICE to help identify and support new health technologies as they move from inception to adoption in the UK health and care system, was formally launched April 29th, 2019. The system, which is free to use, will help companies to understand what information is needed by decision makers in the UK health and care system, and clarify possible routes to market access.

The 13 innovations joining the NHS Innovation Accelerator were announced on March 5, 2019, as part of an event to launch the fourth year of this award-winning national accelerator.

NHS Digital is launching a pilot to build the process that will enable partner services to connect to NHS login, providing a single way for patients in England to verify their identity and then use the login to access digital health and care services. The five selected partners represent the range of organizations who will connect with NHS login - from large, established organizations to new players in the market. The service will begin its activities in April 2019.

The Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) wants to contribute to stimulating the right care in the right place by making it possible to deploy e-health applications more broadly. In 2019 NZa will examine the possibilities for declaring e-health with the focus on district nursing and long-term care. Also, a large part of the e-health projects is in the pilot phase and the Dutch ‘Care for Innovation’ organization developed a step-by-step plan for a systematic approach for e-health introduction.