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Chronic Disease Management

 

Interview: Andreas Poensgen, Turgot Ventures

From online prevention programmes for the masses (HausMed) through to nurse-led programmes that can halve hospitalisation rates (IVPNetworks), Turgo Ventures has recently made big investments in telehealth. Andreas Poensgen, who describes himself as an advanced angel investor, is a former Boston Consulting Group consultant who has been looking at telehealth concepts since the late 1980s.

Statutory insurer and medical profession back new web-based health programmes

Online programmes for seven conditions have been launched in Germany by HausMed, which is part-owned by the German General Practitioners' Association. Insurer AOK Baden Wuerttemberg, with nearly four million enrolees, is now paying for depression and hypertension programmes. Healthcare Europa believes that this is the first serious attempt at a mass launch of web-based programmes with the support of the medical profession and a statutory payor in Europe.

Functional medicine – a new opportunity for private healthcare

The US Institute of Functional Medicine is planning to open its first office in Europe. The movement is now using an individual’s genome to tackle many illnesses, often through the use of complex dietary supplements, and is big business in the USA. Per Batelson, former CEO of Capio Group and founder of international clinic chain Global Health Partner, says that it opens up a vast new market in the prevention and handling of chronic illnesses at a primary care level. Meanwhile, a German lab operator tells us that tests paid for privately, often with a genetic element, are growing in value by anything from 10% to over 35% a year.

Interview: Jose Perdomo, Global eHealth Business Director, Telefonica

Spanish telecom giant Telefónica recently presented its new telehealth initiative at a media conference in London, with some impressive claims. The company says that its has replicated the very impressive (albeit contested) results of the British Whole Systems Demonstrator trial in Spain. Its 2015 revenue target for its telehealth division is €600 million, while the potential UK market is apparently €2 billion. We talk to Jose Perdomo, global eHealth director for Telefónica, to find out more.

Do chronic disease management programmes and telehealth schemes work?

In the autumn of 2011, the Department of Health in England unveiled the staggering results of the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) project, the world's largest telehealth programme trial. These results saw a 20% fall in hospital admissions. More recently, the findings have been questioned, as happened to a similar programme in Germany. Meanwhile, the evidence for nurse mentor-based chronic disease management programmes also remains tenuous. So are these really magic bullets? Or is it all bunk?

Interview: Nicky Lieberman, Head of Community Medicine, Clalit

Clalit, Israel’s largest HMO, claims to have cut the cost of treating diabetes by 40% per patient in the last 6-7 years. We talk to head of community medicine, Nicky Lieberman. Given that diabetes already swallows around a tenth of West European healthcare budgets, this is an extraordinary claim. And this is not some tiny pilot. Clalit has 14 hospitals, 1,400 community outpatient clinics and its own pharmacy and diagnostic networks serving 4 million members.

Will telehealth take off in the UK?

In December 2011 the UK revealed the results of the Whole System Demonstrator trials, the world's largest randomised control trial of telehealth and telecare services.

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