Building and Implementing an eHealth Strategy: is there a Good Recipe for Baltic Countries?

Abstract

eHealth is concerned as a sum of technological means for registration, storage, processing and management of health related information. Since Baltic countries are looking for an optimal directions for eHealth development, presentation is discussing harmonization with eHealth developments in the world and EU - main directives: WHO strategy “eHealth for health care delivery” and an action plan for e European eHealth area (2004), standardization efforts, countries - leaders, success stories, lessons learnt and possible examples to follow. Also problems of Baltic countries - commonalities (similar political, social and health care legacy, diversified local health IT systems, demands caused by ageing, social and economic transitions, free market of health services) and specifics. (Legislative and management principles and environment, intensity, targets and priorities of national pilot eHealth projects) are analysed. Facing eHealth development challenges the choice of appropriate strategy and implementation management becomes crucial. It was analyzed Baltic eHealth activities, including Lithuanian experience — recently accepted eHealth strategy and implementation plan (2007–2015). Alternatives of implementation concepts and standard based integration seeking to create a standard-based and citizen-centred architecture are discussed, action priorities by importance and by time sequence are analysed. Analysis leads to conclusion, that the effective Baltic way towards European eHealth area requires avoiding parallelism, sharing experience, providing of pilot cross-boarder trials between Baltic and Nordic countries, defining the role and contribution of biomedical engineering and medical physics.