Kartläggning av Sveriges landstings användning av telemedicin

Sammanfattning: Sweden's aging population makes the need for a viable health care urgent and telemedicine can be a solution to enable older people to receive or give themselves care in their homes. Furthermore, implementation of telemedicine has the potential to realise profits in society by increasing the accessibility of health care and minimizing travel costs. Sweden’s low population density and geographical configuration makes the advantages of telemedicine even more appealing.   To illustrate the differences between the county councils’ use of telemedicine and thus increasing the possibility for coordinated care between them, the authors have on behalf of the Innovation Centre at the Karolinska University hospital mapped the amount of telemedicine technologies that are available in the Swedish county councils’ today. To collect information an electronic survey and video or telephone interviews were used. This report answers the question of how the use of telemedicine differ between Sweden's county councils in terms of techniques used, how well implemented the technologies are and to what extent the guidelines for development, implementation and use of telemedicine is available. The report also investigated whether the county councils geographic characteristics, in terms of population density and the number of hospitals and health centers, influenced the development of telemedicine.   Of the 21 regional councils information has been collected from 10 counties in seven weeks and the results that were collocated indicated that there are major differences between the county councils' use of telemedicine. It is clear that the northern region and especially Västerbotten and Norrbotten County Council have come a long way in implementing telemedicine technology.   When the results of the electronic survey and interviews were compared with the county councils’ geographical features no correlation could be detected between population density and the use of telemedicine. This can be a result of the low number of participating counties and that we have not examined all departments in health care. The county councils which have university hospitals use multidisciplinary rounds more so than others. In summary, the Swedish county councils are at different stages in the implementation of telemedicine due to several external and internal factors that makes it possible for counties to benefit a lot from collaboration and sharing each other's knowledge.