The Internet will profound the health care system, but there was no significant cost savings
The Internet will be strongly responsible for our healthcare within the next ten years, there are experts in agreement. Doctor, patient, health insurance and pharmacists will have to be reset. But financial savings through accelerated processes and rationalization are barely incurred.
The innovation and market potential of the Internet combined with the dramatic reduction in the cost of telecommunications and computing power breaks up more and more traditional structures, and the health sector is not spared. Not only that a wide range of patient information is already easy to find on the net, "In the last ten years, a lot has happened to the doctors, unnoticed by the publicity" explained Merte Bosch, who is responsible for the division of the Hartmannbund for the EDP area, "namely primarily with regard to rationalization measures".
Already today many folded laboratory reports by email, clinics swap among themselves files and digitized rontgen images, telephoto operations are being tested to carry out spin monitoring of quantities in the definitive environment and students complete parts of their training before the domestic PC. In addition, there are numerous projects in which doctors from smaller hospitals findings about coarse university clinics online to obtain their opinion, so that neither the patient nor any Praparine has to be transported expensive. But that’s all just the beginning, ames experts. Within the next ten years, the Internet will revolutionize healthcare, for all involved.
"The patient is the one who bears the big advantage because he is now easily approaching information that he did not get so fast", Treasure Bosch. More and more medical chambers and universitar facilities build competent websites with health information and medical directories, for doctors and scientists, online expert systems are set up for better evaluation of the literature. An investigation of Cyber Dialogue came to the conclusion that the number of internet surfers looking for health information on the Web for health information is faster than the number of Internet users in total.
The patient has the possibility of better informing and can better decide for his diagnosed illness whether it accepts or rejects a treatment proposal. "This improves the doctor-patient ratio enormously, because the exchange is stanned", Bosch says. From the billing case Patient becomes a Souverman and critical customer, which has a second opinion under circumstances on the Internet.
But the doctor’s visit is also undressing itself in the future? A study of the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers, in which around 450 fleet flee were interviewed from the health sector after their association, concludes that about 20 percent of the practical visits could be eliminated when patients consulted a doctor from home via the Internet. Even today, various websites offer a medical service, with at least the serious providers noticeably pointing out that the information received with them can not replace a doctor’s visit. "The online consultation of a doctor is the pure emergency and can not be like a health information", criticized Bosch. Alone the human requirement, in case of illness with fellow human consolation and support, the online relationship to the doctor is confronted in a natural way.
"I do not think it comes because of the Internet to die of medical practices", Does Hamid A also say. Emminger, Head of New Business Roche Diagnostics. "However, patients are more demanding: current treatment methods, medical directories and worldwide specialists have long been available on the Internet and patients will require certain treatments". The disadvantage: "Doctors must always have their treatment stronger at the "Evidence Based Medicine" Align what your therapy freedom in fact fished", However, which also provides coarse requirements and flexibility to the treating doctors.
Even the doctor itself will have to work with the Internet, whether to retrieve the latest research results, or to offer his patient on the homepage information about his practice and health ies. In the PWC survey, the respondents believed that by 2010 more than 30 percent of the time of doctors on the use of web-based tools will be omitted, which supports him, for example, in the right choice of a drug. In the Netherlands and Great Britain, such electronic prescription systems are currently being developed for general practitioners. They are intended to manage the doctors in the regulation of medicines and thus reduce costs that improve the quality of therapy and reduce incorrect prescriptions, which will ultimately increase patient’s confidence in the long term.
In contrast, opinions go to a web-based patient file in which the entire health profile of a patient is listed, far apart. Although the attending physician has been able to quickly contact specialists, hospitals or laboratories on the Internet and on the basis of the profile on the patient, discussing which diagnosis and treatment was safely accelerated. The health insurance companies also had an interest because they could trace unnecessary benefits and savings. But the medical profession resists vehemently. "Doctors want to know who the information consists and for what the files are used and want to keep control of it, that’s alone from indigestion", explains Bosch. A general access right for all doctors on the patient file was legally problematic and also not always beneficial for the patient, for example if he wants to obtain a second opinion among another doctor. "On the other hand, I find it more meaningful if patients create such a file at home, because then they can specifically provide information on the doctor’s questions", So Bosch.
Even more advanced in the discussion and thanks to some pilot projects, the electronic prescription, which is stretched out of doctors, health insurance and pharmacists, as it rationalizes the elaborate administrative and billing work and allows better control over the medications taken by the patient. Ied by the doctor at his practice PC, the electronic recipe is stored on a regional server. In the pharmacy then the recipe is retrieved after legitimization by means of a health chip card from the server again and the drug is negotiated to the patient. With the electronic recipe, ordering of medicines in the Internet pharmacy was significantly simplified.
So the Internet will ultimately influence a handicap in health care greatly positively, namely the speed of the drain. The workload, the time and the costs that are previously required to ie transfers to obtain test results of laboratories, payment transactions by means of supplying etc., If it is drastically reduced, the experts expect. The enforcement of new treatment and meat methods will continue to enforce faster, as information about faster.
The Internet brings another advantage, namely the normalization. During the time for incompatible systems, no data can be exchanged, then doctors’ practices, university clinics, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and health insurance companies should communicate over the same system, billing, etc. The health experts surveyed by PCW expect that in the next five years, most health organizations will communicate with suppliers, other service providers, financiers, monitoring agents and patients on the Internet. In this way, the efficiency was also allowed to increase the efficiency in health care, because 90 percent of the health care system, so say treasures, run today without result. This is easier with a uniform communication platform, as the Web dual work is understandable, costs and results comparable and thus supported more responsibility of the parties.
However, the internet-based tightening of the health care system will not be without a trace at workplaces. From a treasure of the Chair of Business Administration and Business Informatics at the University of Wurzburg, it shows that telemedicine and online consulting hours as well as the temporal and organizationally improved patient course 5 to 10 percent of the doctors and theoretically saves every second medical assistant. For the pharmacies, in purely mathematical only every fourth workplace was remained unbridicized, because online pharmacies and the administrative expenses in the pharmacy decreased by electronic recipes make a lot of personnel despite consulting needs. In the next ten years, in the next ten years, 35 percent of the workplaces in the healthcan (which corresponded around 300.000 workplaces) saved. In contrast, new workplaces are generally created, preferably in the range of services such as health portals, online pharmacies, tele training, etc.
However, despite rationalization superphology and efficiency hair, the healthcare Internet will not lead to any significant cost reductions, at least the result of the PCW survey, because the savings through the use of Internet and automation will be increased by the growing overall of the population and the associated increase in diseases, the rising patient request for cost-intensive progress in medicine more than weighed.