The right information for the right patient at the moment when it is needed.
Benefits for Governments
The Situation. Some of Europe's largest countries are made up of autonomous regions with full authority over healthcare decisions and the information systems to support healthcare delivery. For example, Spain is made up of nine autonomous health regions, while in Italy there are 21 independent regions, and Germany is a confederation of 16 federal states. Even large nations with a single national structure, such as France or England, have seen the development of diverse health information systems over the past 20 years built around regional university hospitals. This patchwork of regional development of IT for healthcare in Europe has created different, sometimes stand-alone systems for healthcare. Even within regions, documents created by clinical systems for patient care may not interface with administrative systems that determine payment or citizen entitlements for healthcare.
Benefits of Common Health Data. Much is at stake for European national governments who spend hundreds of billions of euros each year as the primary insurer of its citizens' healthcare. There is an urgency in Europe which has a rapidly ageing population that soon will require greater health expenditure while the base for the model for health funding, the younger working population, is shrinking. These governments see a solution in health information systems that can deliver greater efficiency and productivity, as well as supporting alternative delivery of health services for the chronically ill through community-based clinics and in-home care.