Could a Major E-Health Opportunity is Passing Us By?

The European Union has been researching where the ‘main chances’ lie for market innovation and profit over the next five years.

The Lead Market Initiative Program is described as follows:

“The Lead Market Initiative for Europe will foster the emergence of lead markets high economic and societal value. On the basis of intense stakeholder consultations, six markets have been identified against a set of objective criteria; eHealth, protective textiles, sustainable construction, recycling, bio-based products and renewable energies. These markets are highly innovative, respond to customers’ needs, have a strong technological and industrial base in Europe and depend more than other markets on the creation of favourable framework conditions through public policy measures. For each market, a plan of actions for the next 3-5 years has been formulated. The European citizens will benefit both from the positive impact on growth and employment (the identified areas could represent three million jobs and 300 billion EUR by 2020) and from the access to enhanced goods and services of high societal value.”

And what do we find at the top of the list? Good heavens its e-Health!

The following provides some more details

Building Europe’s e-health market

30 Jan 2008

E-Health Europe: How does the new Lead Market Initiative (LMI) on e-health differ from the initiatives previously undertaken by the Commission in this area?

Information Society and Media Directorate-General ICT for Health: “The European Commission has been mainly supporting research and innovation in e-health for the last 20 years. In 2004, it has officially unveiled its support to deployment and policy activities with the e-health action plan. The LMI is a continuation of the e-health action plan and the first initiative to focus on specific policy activities targeting sustainability, growth and transparency of the e-health market.”

EHE: What will be the key milestones by which success of the strategy will be measured?

ICT4H: “The overall Lead Market Initiative calls for urgent and coordinated action in six different market areas - e-health, protective textiles, sustainable construction, recycling, bio-based products and renewable energies - with a timeline of three to five years. The six identified markets cover domains of high economic and societal interest and are expected to grow to €300bn per year in 2020 (in Europe only), from their current estimated €120bn value.

“In the area of e-health we forecast an increase of 43% by 2020, bringing the total volume of the market to €30bn from the current estimate of €21bn in 2006 within the EU. If this materialises, there would be an estimated 360,000 more jobs in Europe in this sector.

“As well as market growth, another key indicator for success will be a scoreboard of member state procurement of innovative ICT solutions in healthcare.

“Ultimately, what matters is that through e-health people will receive better quality care, will have access to care and health information when and where needed and health delivery systems will be more efficient.”

EHE: What period does the strategy cover?

ICT4H: “Action plans focus on a time period of three to five years.”

EHE: What funding does the Commission plan to back the strategy with over its lifetime?

ICT4H: “The Commission has already invested in projects worth over €1bn over the past 20 years through its research framework programmes, for example in the areas of electronic health records, regional health information networks, personal health systems and other tools for patients, as well as ICT tools for professionals including those that support the improvement of patient safety.

“Regarding the LMI, there will be opportunities to fund networking activities of stakeholders (policy makers, finance, standards, clusters and industry) in the themes of the emerging markets, building on ongoing Europe INNOVA activities. Also very targeted events and projects/studies will be called for on business models, on securing and protecting investment and financing of e-health deployment, support to innovation friendly procurements etc. Engaging all relevant services of the Commission will be an important aspect of this initiative.”

EHE: How would you characterise the state of the current European e-health market?

ICT4H: “The health sector as a whole currently involves 9.3% of the EU workforce, more than 15m people. Health expenditure represents more than 8.5% of GDP, growing 4% a year (faster than EU economic growth), and can reach 16% of GDP by 2020 (Healthcast 2020 PricewaterhouseCoopers).

“The e-health industry in the EU was estimated to be worth close to €21bn in 2006. Market players and observers agree that e-health in Europe is set for explosive growth, driven by the need to face the health-related challenges and to take advantage of burgeoning new medical information and communication technologies.

“By 2010, a double digit growth rate of up to 11% is foreseen as driven by a search for more productivity and performance. The prospects are even rosier for the specific sector of telemedicine services in which annual growth of 19% is foreseen.”

Continue reading here:

http://ehealtheurope.net/comment_and_analysis/291/building_europe%E2%80%99s_e-health_market

It seems clear to me Australia needs part of this action!

We are already reasonably positioned with IBA / iSoft having a reasonable and growing presence in the EU.

It seems there are two opportunities here. First the possibility of export of our innovative products to the EU and second the use of this growing market to foster innovation and growth back in Australia to the benefit of all.

First of all we need to get rather better organised or this opportunity will sail on past!

Ms Roxon and Senator Carr – please note!

David.