Author: Jordi Piera Jiménez
Programme: Doctoral Programme on the Information and Knowledge Society
Language: English
Supervisor: Dr Francisco Lupiáñez Villanueva & Dr Frans Folkvord
Faculty / Institute: UOC Doctoral School
Key words:digital health, eHealth, electronic health, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility
Abstract:
Healthcare systems worldwide are facing a number of challenges that are conjunctural to the historical moment and are somehow reshaping a discipline as traditional as medicine. The five major challenges that are defining the future landscape of healthcare practice can be classified into: 1) Demographic change, 2) Urbanization, 3) Deliver patient-centric care, 4) Moving the focus from reactive to proactive medicine and 5) Adoption of digital health technologies. The healthcare sector has been particularly slow in the adoption of digital technologies. When this PhD project started in 2017, the implementation at-scale of digital health was being impeded by numerous barriers, with the dearth of evidence-based research and the lack of proper economic studies around their implementation being the two biggest issues. Acknowledging the abovementioned challenges, the main aim of this PhD thesis was to assess the cost-effectiveness of digital health solutions designed to support the management of major chronic conditions that can be implemented within the Catalan health system.