Opportunities for healthcare digitalization in Europe: Comparative analysis of inequalities in access to medical services

Digitalization of healthcare systems is a great opportunity to address inequalities in access to healthcare in the European Union. There is an urgent need to build on what we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, where digital health technologies were integrated swiftly to limit challenges in healthcare delivery. We created a database for the 27 European Union countries from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), and other Eurostat databases. We performed k-means cluster analysis to group EU countries along two dimensions: inequalities in access to medical services and level of digitalization. We identified five distinct clusters: two clusters with high, two clusters with moderate, and one cluster with low unmet need for healthcare. Regarding digitalization, only one cluster comprising the Nordic countries, Spain and Cyprus exhibit high digital readiness. A cluster comprising the most developed countries in Western Europe represents moderate levels of both unmet need for healthcare and digitalization. For most EU countries, there is still a need to build digital infrastructure for the healthcare industry, which in the long term may increase the number of digital solutions used by both patients and healthcare professionals. Policy makers across the EU need to consider investing in initiatives that would support digital health solutions as an effective means of healthcare provision and healthcare management.