Report identifies telemedicine as key digital health investment area

A report has identified telemedicine as a key investment area for digital healthcare over the next five years.

The report, launched by Siemens Financial Services (SFS), has identified remote access and communication platforms as one of the key areas of investment – estimating £1.4 billion in investment is required for telemedicine in the UK over the five-year period 2019-2023.

Given that capital spending budgets in healthcare around the world are typically around 5% of total operating budgets, such a scale of investment is not within the capabilities of normal funding levels.

SFS interviewed respondents from around the world - specialist management consultants, academic commentators, national health departments, medical associations and acute care organisations/groups – to understand where they considered the greatest and quickest value would come from digitalisation in healthcare. 

Respondents judged telemedicine to hold the highest potential for rapid positive impact on pressurised healthcare infrastructures and operations. The other two key areas of digital transformation are new generation (digitalised and/or mobile) diagnostics and smart digitalised hospitals.

Healthcare systems across the globe are suffering from skills shortages, thereby dramatically increasing the workload on staff and increasing error rates. As demand for healthcare increases, and financial pressure on healthcare systems mounts, new ways of working are required to provide citizens with access to their healthcare needs.

By enabling patients to consult a doctor remotely, digital telemedicine can help counter the skills shortage faced by many healthcare systems. Tele-consultations, for example, can help overcome the issue of an unevenly dispersed healthcare workforce. 

Telemedicine also links doctors to diagnostic equipment and centres, analytical staff, clinical specialists, diagnostic and therapy databases and surgical centres, in dispersed locations. By extending patient care outside of the clinical setting, digital telemedicine helps minimise unnecessary hospital visits and creates greater flexibility for both healthcare professionals and patients. 

Chris Wilkinson, head of sales for healthcare and public sector for Siemens Financial Services in the UK, said: “Using specialist knowledge of the healthcare sector, each individual arrangement, whether for a single piece of equipment, or for an enterprise-wide strategic digital upgrade, can be flexed to meet the organisation’s particular clinical and cash-flow needs. A range of financing tools are available, which are designed to enable digital transformation by allowing healthcare organisations to pay to use the new generation technology. This helps them save precious capital while realising the benefits of digitalisation.”