The countdown for telemedicine in the National Health Service has officially started: in less than a year, i.e. from 2024, Italians will be able to receive online visits from home, remote parameter checks or consultations between several specialists on the pathologies they suffer from. The countdown of this mini revolution announced with the Pnrr which invests 1 billion in telemedicine started with the assignment in recent days to Almaviva and Engineering of the tender for the creation and management of the national telemedicine platform, the infrastructure that will guide the Regions in the provision of services.
Starting in 2024: a doctor’s prescription will suffice
Meanwhile, just in these days Agenas, the Regional Health Services Agency which is also the Agency for Digital Health, is defining the needs (that is, the audience of patients and doctors involved) in order to arrive in April at the tenders that will assign 750 million to the Regions for their programs. The goal is to be ready at the beginning of 2024 when the first NHS telemedicine services will start – therefore prescribed with a doctor’s prescription (free or with the ticket) – so that from the following year we will become fully operational by treating online, as required by the Pnrr, at least 200 thousand Italians. «Thanks to the platform – explained the Minister of Health Horace Schillaci – healthcare professionals will have new validated tools to operate effectively in each individual and multi-disciplinary process and at the same time the accessibility of patients to treatments and services will also be improved. We will therefore be able, thanks to telemedicine, to give timely and quality answers to the demand for health services in the area”.
How the national platform works
Engineering (as agent company) together with Almaviva – both with long experience in the digital sector – were therefore awarded the management of the national telemedicine platform for 10 years against a fee of 235 million euro, part of the billion made available by the Pnrr. The timing first of all provides for a planning and implementation phase before going online at the end of 2023 in order to hook up regional services starting from 2024. But what will be its task? First of all, that of ensuring that the services are provided in a homogeneous way throughout Italy, precisely respecting the national standards through a whole series of tools (codings, nomenclatures and systems for defining guidelines and best practice and diagnostic therapeutic pathways). The services are obviously those outlined in the provisions signed by the Ministry of Health and in particular: televisits, telemonitoring and telecontrols and teleconsultations.
Dialogue with the Regions and data management
Thanks to the platform, a series of procedural and IT requirements will be defined, which each regional system will have to respect and maintain over time. This homogeneity will thus allow data interoperability, ie the constant dialogue between the platform and the regional services, allowing for a constant exchange of information and, therefore, also of experiences. In this way, if necessary, to correct the shot. Not only that: the platform will obviously also have to guarantee the security of health data (applying the directives of the National Cybersecurity Agency) which will also be processed to verify the correct provision of services. Again through the platform, these will flow into the national ecosystem of health data in communication also with the new electronic health record. A flow that will also help to better plan health care costs and plan treatments from a predictive medicine perspective.
In April the tenders for the Regions
After the launch of the platform, the next step will be the tender scheduled for April for the Regions (Lombardy and Puglia will lead the way) which will be assigned the remaining 750 million of the Pnrr: by mid-March Agenas – which pulls the strings of the plan on telemedicine with its director Domenico Mantoan – will communicate the needs based on the operational plans already sent by the Regions. These needs will serve to identify the audience of chronic patients involved in online care and the health professionals needed for the services, in particular for telemonitoring and telecontrols. Among the targets of the new telemedicine services there are in particular diabetic patients, those with respiratory and cardiological pathologies, but also oncological and neurological patients.