Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. About 26.6 million adults (11.3 percent) have been diagnosed with heart disease, which kills more than 600,000 people each year.
The number of people who go to the hospital for heart disease every year is about 3.7 million. On average, these people stay in the hospital for 4.6 days. And a whopping 12.4 million people make heart disease-related visits to their physicians every year.
The issue of heart disease is certainly not isolated to the U.S. Around the world, 17.3 million people die from cardiovascular disease every year. To combat this problem, health officials in Europe are hoping to use technology.
According to Martin R. Cowie, professor of cardiology at Imperial College London and the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, information and communication technology (ICT) needs to play a central role in the medical world. ICT helps us make decisions in almost every aspect of life, including what to buy and where to travel, and patients are often frustrated that healthcare has not kept pace.
This deficit is particularly interesting because by 2017, it is expected that more than 3 billion people worldwide will own a smartphone, and half will use health apps. Yet professional organizations have largely ignored this area of health and lifestyle decision-making. ICT has the potential to personalize healthcare, help patients take more responsibility for their own health, and cut down on costly hospital stays.
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) considers e-health vital to achieving its mission of reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease in Europe. E-health refers to the use of ICT in healthcare services, surveillance, education, training and research. Examples are mobile applications (apps) for monitoring physiological signs such as blood pressure, telemedicine for remote monitoring of patients with heart failure, electronic medical records, e-prescribing, e-referrals, decision support systems for physicians, and disease registries.
However, Cowie stresses that there is no global approach to regulation of health apps, and consumers can be misled into purchasing a technology that is less beneficial than advertised. In his positions paper, he highlights the ESC's key deliverables in e-health.
The ESC will take the lead on making e-health an essential part of educational events. The ESC curriculum and syllabus will be updated to include e-health in the knowledge and skills required by cardiologists and other healthcare professionals. The immediate plan is to:
- facilitate wider implementation of e-health
- educate and train ESC members in the appropriate use of e-health
- discuss regulation and quality control (including benchmarks) with relevant organizations
- participate in societal and political discussions on data security and confidentiality
- support research into the development, evaluation and implementation of e-health technologies
- promote policy dialogue at local, national and international levels with governments, regulators, payers, professional bodies, citizens, patients, healthcare professionals and industry
- provide information for European citizens on the risks and benefits of e-health applications.
The ESC will support and encourage its members to conduct research to develop ICT solutions, improve interoperability and evaluate health and healthcare impact and value for money. A summit will be organized for relevant stakeholders to develop criteria for evaluating technologies, and develop guidelines for the design of e-health trials.
