We have the technology and plenty of areas where they could be helpful so why aren’t e-health apps being used on a wider scale? If people were to monitor their health independently it would not only save lives and money but boost the economy as well , says Neelie Kroes.

This week I was told about an 82 year-old lady who switched to a cable company. She thought it would make sense to have one subscription for everything: the telephone and the tv,  and the internet for mailing to her friends and skyping with her grandson. She also wanted an alarm button to alert a home help organisation, just in case. She could have the button but only if she went back to her old phone system. A programme for fall detection and prevention – the lady in question is ‘fall-prone’ – wasn’t  available. It’s time we stop and think about this.

ICT solutions

Europe is having to cope with an increasingly elderly population, mounting healthcare costs and a shortage of trained professionals. The signs of a future shortage of nurses and doctors, far greater than the present unemployment among these groups, are already with us. We won’t solve that problem with a ‘Join the healthcare profession’ campaign or another round of cutbacks. A higher own risk, or scrapping treatments from the basic healthcare package won’t do it either. What we need is structural reform and innovation based on clever ICT solutions.

That will take a mindshift, from paying for being ill to investing in a healthy and active old age. Care homes, for instance, are geared towards intensive, full time care. The care of chronically ill people in a hospital or care home is very expensive and detrimental to their social life. By including clever ICT applications in the innovation process we can keep healthcare affordable, keep up a healthy and active lifestyle until well into old age and stimulate the economy.

e-health apps

It’s very simple: e-health apps – there are already some 30,000 out there – can help people to monitor their health independently. My Nike fuelband tells me how often I should take the stairs in order to reach my daily step target. Information exchange between patient, doctor and a measuring apparatus can take place via smartphone 24 hours a day. There are plenty of possibilities and the technology is available. So why aren’t we using e-health apps more widely? Take fall prevention and detection. Every year in the Netherlands more elderly die from the consequences of a fall than there are victims of traffic accidents. But clever technology to prevent or limit falls is not being implemented across the board.

Why do we accept this? Are we too ensconced in our institutional arrangements and vested interests? Technology is an aid to progress but it’s the people – patients, healthcare workers, insurance companies and ministers – who have to make it happen. Everybody needs to make that mindshift.

Experiment

The British Whole System Demonstrator project is a case in point. The experiment involved 6000 patients, half of them suffering from chronic illnesses like heart failure and diabetes. Everybody worked together, from specialist to visiting nurse. As it turned out, telecare and telemonitoring made for cheaper and better healthcare. People who monitor their health at home free up time for doctors and healthcare workers to spend with patients and attend to other core tasks. Result: an 8% decrease in costs, a 15% drop in A&E visitor numbers, a 14% drop in the number of days spent in hospital and – almost unbelievably – a 45% drop in the number of deaths. ‘I’m back to my normal daily routine’, one of the participants said.

So here’s the story in a nutshell: the elderly are not a drain on resources, they are a source for innovation and economic growth.

Neelie Kroes is Euro commissioner in charge of the Digital Agenda

This column was published earlier in the Financieele Dagblad