Empowering Patients through ICT, Organisational Impact on Healthcare Systems in England and Scotland

This paper reports on the efforts carried out by England and Scotland to promote the widespread use of telehealthcare within Personal Health Systems (PHS) for patients with chronic conditions. In each setting, it explains the political drive, the trends in empowering patients, the needs for healthcare systems to treat chronic patients at home, the search for evidence supporting the case for telehealthcare, the reorganisation of services around these technologies and the need to coordinate and/or integrate different tiers of care in order to address the needs of patients suffering from chronic conditions. It details the achievements to-date and building on recent policy developments, it provides an overview on the likelihood of these services becoming a routine form of care. Following the two different approaches on telehealthcare in England and Scotland, it puts into perspective the need for adequate systemic governance and institutional reforms required to address the challenges associated to ICT implementations at organisational level and how the industry may be able to deliver solutions supporting them.