Robert Bosch Healthcare business development director Suneel Ratan today warned that the economics of rolling out tele-health were strongest in the US where healthcare costs were high relative to other markets.
Mr Ratan was commenting on RBH's experience providing healthcare services for the US Department of Veteran Affairs at the CeBIT technology conference in Sydney.
"The important thing to think about when you implement this technology and the kind of intervention that this technology supports, you've got to be really, really clear about your goals," Mr Ratan said.
"Personally, just to be utterly frank, I'm a little sceptical that the cost savings argument outside of the US, because our patients cost at least twice as much as similar patients in the rest of the world. You're really thin-slicing the population. We can address 3 to 5 per cent of the population cost-effectively in an elderly population in the US so you're going to be talking about 1 to 1.5 per cent."
Mr Ratan argued that while the current cost of providing care to patients with chronic conditions in Australia was about $16,000 per year that cost was closer to $50,000 in the US making it easier to make the economic argument for a larger portion of its population.
That didn't mean that Australia should abandon the notion of using tele-health, he said. Proponents of e-health should be careful not to rely too heavily on economic logic to support their arguments.
At the end of the day people don't provide health for logical reasons, he said.
"I'm not discouraging you, it's just that at the end of the day you have to believe that this is the right thing to do for your patients. You almost have to believe that emotionally."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Andrew Colley
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 25.05.2010
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