Policies, Strategies & Marketsin eCare & the Ageing Society
One of the key challenges of European care systems today is to improve the quality, availability, and access to their services. At the same time, the sustainability of present care systems is endangered by the limited availability of financial, human, and other resources, as well as by the spread of chronic diseases among the young and the old, changing ratios of active and retired people and rising expectations of citizens and professionals. ICTs are a promising means to tackle these challenges, but they are often and too easily declared as a fast way out for many problems. Reality is however more complex and a range of barriers exist including uncertainty about the role and relative value of ICT-based solutions in meeting the needs of clients, professional and organisational willingness and capacity to change.
Policy and practice have to rethink, and re-structure existing strategies, directions and operational processes in order to address these challenges and ensure sustainability of our care systems. This needs to be based on a good understanding of the reality of the current situation as regards ICT-supported care provision and existing policies and governance mechanisms.
Against the background of our solid experience from many research and deployment projects and on the basis of both qualitative policy analyses and representative empirical data, we develop strategic concepts, policy recommendations and definitive courses of action for policy makers, service providers interest groups and other civil society organisations. We have extensive experience in the market validation of ICT-based care services and in studies of eHealth and eCare market trends and developments as well as benchmarking and RTD road mapping. We apply business process analyses to new organisational forms or value systems and help clients to analyse and improve their business processes and workflows.
We have provided services to the European Commission, the European Parliament, OECD, WHO, European Space Agency, global industrial players, national and regional governments as well as health & social care service providers. Our work is based on a broad understanding of policy, strategic, clinical, business and socio-economic issues surrounding health and care.
