Brussels, 30/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - Two-thirds of healthcare providers in Europe denounce the fact that information in their sector is not shared. This is what is revealed in the findings of a Coleman Parkes study in partnership with the Ricoh Europe group. The study highlights the challenges that remain to be faced in order to make healthcare services more effective by using ICT.
Entitled “Ricoh Document Governance Index 2012”, the study explains how new technology has an impact on the way work is done in Europe, especially in healthcare, education, justice, the public services and the financial services. It highlights the way information management is ensured, including the processes linked to sensitive documents that underpin all operations, such as finance, human resources and access to patients' files. On healthcare, the study reveals that 81% of healthcare professionals state that their establishments invest in new technologies in order to become more productive and to allow distance working. Nonetheless, only 41% say they have overcome the challenge of information-sharing internally and 62% believe that this is more complicated or quite simply no better than in 2009. These figures underline the challenges of information-sharing in the healthcare sector still to be raised, and the distance that has still to be covered before the objectives fixed by the European Commission can be reached in order to improve the effectiveness of healthcare systems throughout Europe. In its “social investment” package presented on 20 February last, the Commission recommends profitability by judicious innovation and by the development of tools allowing the performance of health systems to be better assessed. Furthermore, the spending made for the acquisition of new technological tools is not always relevant: 78% of respondents state that their companies invest in new technology before using the functions of existing tools to the full. And once the investment is made, 32% of employees consider they do not receive adequate training to allow them to use the new technology to its full potential. Finally, despite the investment in new technologies such as personal tablets and computer terminals, 38% take the view that the introduction of these appliances has made the process of vital information management even more complicated than before. The fact-finding mission was carried out among one thousand professionals in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Ireland. (IL/transl.jl)