The next phase of eHealth work (SOU 2015:32)
IT&Telekomföretagen has submitted a statement regarding "The next phase of e-health work". The referral was received from the Ministry of Social Affairs.
For almost a decade, there have been various forms of a national strategy for eHealth. Despite this, not as much has happened as many had hoped. There are several reasons for this: underestimation of the complexity; unclear leadership; weak governance; legal blockages; organizational, cultural and competence issues; balancing between privacy and benefits for health / care; lack of incentives, etc. With this we do not want to criticize previous work, but rather point out that it is a multifaceted and challenging task to change health and care so that the opportunities offered by eHealth will really be taken advantage of.
We would therefore, as a first point of view, like to emphasize the importance that future efforts for the use of eHealth and welfare technology to a much greater extent than so far must contain more steering processes, rather than recommendations to municipalities and county councils, well aware of the problems inherent in legislation on self-governing municipalities. Especially in smaller municipalities[1] it is not reasonable to expect that they will have the necessary competence and resources to drive the use themselves, which justifies a greater element of governance.
Appropriate and secure information management in healthcare, outpatient pharmacies and social services can improve both patient and user safety and the quality of these activities. The eHealth Committee's proposal aims to provide the conditions for such information management. The eHealth Committee believes that it is not acceptable that the safety of patients and users is jeopardized by shortcomings in information management.