Authors: Hege K Andreassen, Tove Sørensen, Per Egil Kummervold

Publisher: Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine, University Hospital of North Norway

The report can be found here

There is little knowledge on how e-health will influence health care delivery. A survey on patients’ and health consumers’ use of e-health services is an opportunity to monitor to what degree e-health practices are becoming important in the everyday lives of European citizens. Further, the survey is a tool for policy makers when developing future health services.

The project includes two surveys, conducted with 18 months interval in seven European Countries, by interviewing health consumers by telephone. The countries were Norway, Denmark and Germany in Northern and Central Europe, Latvia and Poland in Eastern Europe and Greece and Portugal in Southern Europe.

The number of Internet health users increased from 44% in 2005 to 54% in 2007. The growth in the use of Internet for health purposes is found in all seven countries participating in the survey.  As expected, the Northern European countries are topping the list of active Internet health users. Denmark has the biggest population percentage using the Internet for healthcare related matters, 72% in 2007. Greece and Latvia have the most important growth between 2005 and 2007, 39% and 34% respectively. Thus the largest relative growth of Internet health users is found in Eastern and Southern Europe. This might indicate that the use of the Internet for health purposes becomes common in the general population.