Gábor Kovács

Gábor Kovács

With a trial nature, 300 doctors and 15,000 patients, a service provided by external companies for 317 million will start in the Health Care Center system. Under the original plans, the trial should have ended in March.

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, normal Hungarian health care services are on fire, in practice the state telemedicine service (telemedicine) was launched en masse at any moment. At least something like the fact that the GP decides over the phone whether a patient needs a physical exam or an intervention is more or less related to telemedicine in terms of the history of videoconferencing in digital education.

At the same time, the launch of full-blown public telemedicine is already underway. The State Health Care Center (ÁEEK) has signed the contract for the pilot launch of the system, which has been in development for a couple of years, according to a notice published in the EU public procurement notice. The contract was won by a consortium of two private health companies, PSO Group Zrt. And Junimed Egészségügyi Szolgáltató Kft., For HUF 317.3 million.

Your data is also the future in health

To test public telemedicine, infrastructure and test subjects (doctors and patients) will be provided by the ÁEEK, the winning consortium will be responsible for providing the service, supporting test participants, and collecting and processing the data. The test must include a minimum of 250 GPs and 50 specialists, and at least 15,000 patients, each with at least one successful home measurement and / or teleconsultation in the endocrinology, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, dermatology, hypertension groups.

In telemedicine, everything revolves around data, which doctors can access in the 21st century without having to meet with the patient in person, and doctors can share data and information with each other. Patient status data may come from certified devices released for home use (this will be discussed in the current test), but in a broader sense, all information that devices, smartphones, fitness watches, and smartwatches which are already common can help a doctor. Or the data that people register in, for example, some mobile phone application.

It didn’t even start when it should have ended

Despite all this, there is no complete telemedicine service in Hungary. Some private companies primarily offer teleconsultation services (web services for patients). The ÁEEK telemedicine system is part of the Electronic Health Services Area (EESZT) launched in 2017. The EESC already manages all data related to patients in public health, including electronic prescriptions, which have also played an important role in the face of epidemic restrictions. Incidentally, advances in both the EESC and telemedicine have been implemented and are being implemented with the support of the EU.

The implementation of the state telemedicine system (not surprisingly based on the general state of public health) is not proceeding smoothly. Already in early 2018, ÁEEK announced that the telemedicine project will begin in 2019. GPs began recruiting for the test in early 2019, and in May the pilot appeared to be working between July 2019 and March 2020. In For comparison, ÁEEK issued a public procurement for the use of test-related services only in August, bids could be submitted until November. However, only a summary of the bid evaluation was released in March, and the contract was finally signed with the winning consortium in early April.

Of course, a coronavirus outbreak can affect the testing, and it is unclear when and to what extent the system is expected to come online. Until the publication of our article, ÁEEK did not answer our questions.

Not only electronic health, there is no fluid health strategy

The development of the state telemedicine system is not favored by the fact that the government does not have a strategy for improvement. It is true that, in general, there is no health strategy. In principle, the Hungarian Digital Health Industry Development Strategy (DEFS) is being prepared, but not in the health government, nor in the Ministry of Innovation (formerly: development), but for some reason in the framework of the Tamás Deutsch Digital Wellbeing Program. The creation of the strategy was ordered by a government decision in 2017, but has not been published since. The truth is that the Pál Heim Foundation (whose strategic director is Pál Heim, the professional manager of DESI) signed a contract with Digital Welfare Plc. For HUF 28 million in 2018 to prepare a study to establish the strategy.

However, digital developments are a prosperous field and would be highly needed in Hungarian healthcare as well. Some points from a 2017 presentation by Pál Heim:

  • Due to an inadequate life, the estimated cost of years of deteriorating health corresponds to 20 percent of GDP, which is close to HUF 5.5 billion a year in Hungary.
  • Our spending on the treatment of preventable diseases consumes more than 1,000 billion forints a year.
  • Redundant doctor-patient appointments can be activated by approx. HUF amounts to 150 billion.
  • Extremely low levels of population-generated fitness, wellness and health data assets are not systematically processed, are “recycled”, disease is predicted, and the quality of the doctor-patient relationship is improved through tool processing , applications and data.
  • The global digital health industry is growing at a rate of 10 percent annually and exceeds $ 200 billion annually, in which Hungary has virtually no role to play.

The legislator (government and parliament) would also have something to do, since the Hungarian legal system hardly knows the concept itself. Not included at all in the Health Law, telemedicine and telediagnostics were defined only at the regulatory level. According to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) compilation, legislation on the operating conditions of electronic health services is largely absent; At the same time, Hungary is on the way to data protection rules.



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The coronavirus is the greatest crisis of our time, in which it is literally vital to discover it from an authentic source. At HVG, we are committed to this mission even in this situation: to provide accurate, objective and independent information to our readers.

Support our work to bring you up-to-date information even in difficult circumstances.

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