Heatwave was a wakeup call for the European healthcare sector

The heatwave, which caused a sudden increase in death rates during August, has focussed attention on a problem European health ministers will face during coming decades.

A shortage of medical staff was blamed for the particularly high death rate in France. However demographic trends will ensure that within twenty years the ratio of clinicians to elderly patients, distorted this August by the large number of doctors on holiday, will become the norm.
One way to provide care for an ageing population is to automate healthcare. Already a number of IT vendors have jumped on the ehealth bandwagon and are selling their remote care solutions into the long term care market. In its report "Care for The Aged - Long Term Problem or Long Term Opportunity." the Cambridge UK based consultancy Wireless Healthcare describes a number of initiatives that are underway to monitor elderly people in their own homes. Some of these systems can alert clinicians if an elderly person is experiencing distress during a period of extreme weather such as a heatwave.
The report describes both technical and financial issues relating to remote monitoring of elderly people and examines a number of ehealth services that are moving from trial phase to full implementation. A number of these services use equipment developed by EU funded research groups.
At present funding ehealth for the elderly is not a major problem as many elderly people contribute to their own care. However Wireless Healthcare warns that the situation may change. "At the moment many elderly people are living on pensions purchased before the recent pension crisis, or have withdrawn equity from their homes." Explains Peter Kruger, a senior analyst with Wireless Healthcare, who goes on to point out. "Future generations will have smaller pensions to live on and, as more elderly people move out of their homes, the property market will soften cutting the amount of equity an elderly person can withdraw from their property." Kruger warns that health providers and IT vendors may enjoy strong revenue streams from the 'greying market' during the next decade but must hope that, in the long term, governments and local authorities pick up the bill for monitoring the elderly.
On the other hand Wireless Healthcare also believes that economies of scale and the falling cost of IT hardware and communications equipment will bring down the cost of ehealth services. It also believes that outsourcing services to overseas health providers will play a roll in reducing costs and overcoming staff shortages.
,Wireless Healthcare (http://www.wirelesshealthcare.co.uk) is a UK based consultancy specialising in ehealth and telemedicine.
"Care for The Aged - Long Term Problem or Long Term Opportunity." examines the potential impact of ehealth and remote patient monitoring in the long term care market. The report profiles DoCoBo, Roke Manor Research, Tunstall and Hanover Scotland.
Press copies available on request.
For further details contact:
Toby Jackson,++ 44 (0)1223 208926,E-mail: [e-mail]

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