Proof of cost effectiveness needed to spur U.K. telehealth uptake

Telehealth may have succeeded in capturing the imagination of the healthcare industry here in the U.S.--spawning a host of partnership efforts, joint ventures and other initiatives in recent months--but across the pond, lingering questions about the technology's cost effectiveness have given rise to an identifiable chasm between the early adoption and wider uptake of technologies.

As the London-based eHealth Insider points out, a review of use of assistive technologies in health and social care suggests more evidence on the cost effectiveness of telehealth and telecare innovations is needed to encourage their wider adoption. The findings stem from a briefing paper issued by the Whole System Demonstrator Action Network in June, entitled "Sustaining innovation in telehealth and telecare."

Despite boasts that England is leading European countries in trialling new products and services--and claims that between 1.6 million and 1.7 million people in England now use telecare--the authors of the briefing paper say telehealth services are “comparatively undeveloped” with around 5,000 uses. "Many of these people receive telehealth services through the Department of Health’s Whole System Demonstrator pilot programme, said to be the largest randomised control trial of assistive technologies in the world," the eHealth Insider article states.

Outside the idealized conditions of the pilot program bubble, however, use of telehealth is much lower because many primary care trusts are finding it very difficult to turn the local findings from 30 to 50 unit pilots into a business case at a much larger scale supporting 1,000 users or more.

As the WSDAN paper states: “The lack of robust evidence on the cost-effectiveness of telehealth innovations in the UK largely accounts for the limited uptake of the technology to date. Many PCTs feel that they have to prove their own business case for telehealth in order to adopt the technology locally, rather than accept findings from elsewhere.”
 
The bottom line is that, in the U.K., innovations intended for use in healthcare come with a higher demand for evidence of cost effectiveness than those innovations targeting housing or social care. Wider adoption, therefore, will take some serious persuasion.