Danish doctors among best users of eHealth in EU

Danish doctors remain as one of the leaders in the European Union (EU) when it comes to eHealth -- healthcare services provided electronically via the internet, said a new report by the European Commission released recently.

The report of Benchmarking Deployment of eHealth among General Practitioners (2018) took a random sample of 5,793 General Practitioners from the 27 member states.

The intended purpose of the report was to "understand and measure the current use of information and communication technology and eHealth applications by general practitioners in the European Union."

Denmark came in high in the use of electronic patient records: the collection of patient and population electronically-stored health information in a digital format, which is second to Estonia.

Denmark also rose from 20th to 4th place in the prevalence of telemedicine. The method that allows a doctor to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients using common technology, such as video conferencing and smartphones, without the need for an in-person visit.

Through statistical analysis, the report concluded that eHealth had actually increased throughout the Eurozone since the last study in 2013. In that report, Denmark was also a leader in eHealth solutions.

However, the report made one troubling revelation. Doctors' relationship to technology, throughout the EU, are not equal but cleanly divided on regional, economic and cultural lines.

The report found that countries situated north and west of the continent, Denmark, Spain, Finland and the United Kingdom, did much better than fellow EU states in the south and east like Greece, Malta, Romania and Slovakia which not only did not perform well and were generally proving very slow at applying eHealth solutions.

Further findings revealed that there are a wide range of factors that can drive or hinder the uptake of information and communication technology in health care.

Factors that the report identified as influencing the adoption and use of eHealth solutions included: availability of applications, motivation, perceived benefits, community demands peer group pressure and IT ability.