Telehealth Blocks

The Vienna eHealth Strategy formulates the central goal of "increasing quality and efficiency in health and social services through the coordinated use of ICT", i.e. information and communication technology. This includes supporting integrated care, increasing networking, interoperability, usability and accessibility, and raising awareness among citizens. Another special field of action is the establishment of telemedicine (telehealth) and the associated prerequisites and services. In addition, the benefits of the measures should be clearly presented, and health data protected from unauthorized access.

Telehealth is the provision of preventive, health-promoting and curative health services at a distance using information and communication technologies. Important fields of action, which are named by the Viennese eHealth strategy in this context, are 

• Video consultations between health service providers (GDAs)
• Video consultations between GDAs and patients
• Teleconsultations
• Use of telemedicine applications for chronic diseases including apps, video consultations and artificial intelligence applications 

Technical, organizational and financial aspects regarding implementation and execution should be explicitly considered.
So far, the implementation of telehealth in Austria has not progressed very far and there is still little knowledge about the specific factors that are needed to increase the use of telehealth in Vienna.
The Telehealth Blocks project aims to investigate and describe in detail relevant factors for the implementation of telehealth in Vienna, including relevant GDAs and patients in an interdisciplinary way. The focus is on the occupational groups of occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy, orthoptics, dietetics, health care and nursing as well as midwifery.