Health care

The health sector within the EU employs almost 10 percent of the total work force and corresponds to 9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) according to the eHealth Task Force Report from the European Commission. Health spending is rising faster and is expected to be 16 percent of GDP in OECD by 2020. These figures naturally present grave challenges for the whole health and social care system. Introduction of new technology and ICT infrastructures within the health care industry is expected to be one of the main components of the future health care system.

“eHealth” covers many different application areas, but one of the most interesting ones is home monitoring of chronic diseases. Treatment of chronic diseases is estimated to account for over 70 percent of the total healthcare costs in Europe. The market for home wireless monitoring in healthcare is still in an early phase, but is moving quickly. Among the most common conditions to monitor at home are irregular heartbeats or cardiac arrhythmia, high blood pressure, glucose levels in diabetes, and high levels of lipids or fats in the blood. A recent study from Berg Insight estimates that in Europe and North America 40 million people have cardiac arrhythmia, 200 million people have high blood pressure, 60 million people are diabetic, and 180 million people have severe elevation of blood lipids. All these diseases are increasing as a result of people getting older and heavier, and all are major causes of high healthcare costs.

The overall movement towards digital home monitoring equipment also paves the way for an increasing demand of transferring data to the care-giver in a secure and reliable way. Wireless communication capabilities are increasingly being built into medical devices to be used as stand alone or together with a personal mobile phone. One of the key drivers is to secure efficient access to real-time data independently on location. Combined with Internet based health portals this provides a strong platform for increased usage of remote patient monitoring. Other applications within the eHealth sector also include ambient assisted living (AAL), i.e. monitoring of the well-being of elderly of people at risk and also personal emergency response systems (PERS) such as emergency call alarms etc.

Telenor Connexion is working closely with various providers of eHealth solutions to secure the best possible integration of reliable and secure communication solutions for different kinds of applications and devices.