Danish telehealth pilots to go national

Denmark has rolled-out two telehealth pilot programs it now intends to implement on a nationwide basis over the next three years.

One of the pilot programs, already in place at the Odense University Hospital in Odense, involves using a video conferencing service to allow foreign patients who don’t speak Danish to communicate with hospital staff. The service uses a video conferencing system, linked to a call center with multi-lingual operators, who can translate a person’s needs or problems immediately to help them receive a better diagnosis.

This first interpretation center was opened in June 2009. Regional implementation of the system is expected by 2010, with a national roll-out to be completed by 2012. A second telehealth pilot was initiated at the beginning of September to monitor around 800,000 unstable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients from their home.

Under this program patients receive a suitcase of video conferencing equipment and monitoring devices and the nurses do their normal rounds over a video conference system where they record the patients’ vital signs. This program is expected to rolled out nationally in 2012.



Michael Bassett,

Contributor

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