Researchers from Australia and Germany have compared the national eHealth strategies in their respective countries and the compared and contrasted findings are combined in their report in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations.
Isabella Eigner, Andreas Hamper, and Freimut Bodendorf of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Nilmini Wickramasinghe of Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, explain how the healthcare systems of the two countries share many traits in insurance and management and how both nations have initiated strategies to utilise information and communications technology (ICT) in healthcare, so-called eHealth. The aim being to improve healthcare by using digital services and raising service efficiency, reducing costs, and most importantly improving and patient outcomes as a result.
The team points out that while Australia has focused on a platform-based approach, which was originally known as the “personally controlled electronic health record”, Germany has introduced a mandatory “electronic health card” for people with public health insurance. Their comparison of the effects of such steps in each country reveals the pros and cons of each approach in the context of two different nations, which might be used to improve the implementation of eHealth strategies elsewhere or offer the necessary detail to allow those already in place in Australia, Germany, and other countries to be improved.
Eigner, I., Hamper, A., Wickramasinghe, N. and Bodendorf, F. (2019) ‘Success factors for national eHealth strategies: a comparative analysis of the Australian and German eHealth system’, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp.399–424.