• Martin Rasmussen
  • Lene Secher
3 year, Master of Health Informatics (Continuing education) (Continuing Education Programme (Master))
Introduction
Danish National Health Care, like most other western countries, is facing a great challenge due to the increasing relative number of elderly citizens, subsequently increasing numbers of chronicle ill.
In Health Care Strategies, Telemedicine is presented as a part of a major transformation to improve quality of treatment, cost efficiency, and connectivity across sectors.

Worldwide, as throughout Denmark, Projects to evaluate the prospect of treating chronicle ill patients in their homes by the use of telehealth-care is conducted in great numbers. The purpose of this project is to evaluate to what extent, it is possible to use a review of recent literature on the subject, in context of the officially health care strategy, to gain insight on what types of telemedical initiatives holds the greatest promises of success.

Design and Methods
We have conducted a review on the subject to gain insight on strategies and evaluations. A search quarry was made for Literature on Strategies partly as a google search, partly as ”snowballing”. A structured Medline search was done for Literature on evaluations. Literature was analyzed and coded in Nvivo9 software, mind maps and manual matrixes.
As a theoretical reference for the project we used partly ”The Social Construction of Technology”- Theory, partly ”Structure in Fives”.

Results
In the SCOT perspective we have identified relevant social groups and investigated their Perceived technological frame. Structure in fives gives a perspective on the organizational challenges of the strategies. We have identified key issues for the Danish strategies and discuss their prospect of success.

Conclusion
The technology of telemedicine is still under construction, but key issues to the successful implementation of the Danish strategies are a clarification of means and methods by the management. In order to convince the health professionals to apply the technology it is imperative to convince them of the credibility to their standards. This can only be done by clinical trials by the professionals themselves and must be encouraged by the management by selective funding and support. The organizational challenge of patient centered health care across health sectors is complex and must not be underestimated.
LanguageDanish
Publication date31 May 2012
Number of pages83
ID: 63474909