Investigation of E-health solutions for chronic diseases and the cost benefits in Swedish Regions/County councils

Swedish healthcare is facing major challenges both today but more critically looking at predictions for the next 20 years. Healthcare costs will increase dramatically and competent personnel to support all the needs will be lacking. E-health solutions and the possibilities they open up regarding how care can be organized and administrated are seen in Sweden as the most important tool to counter those healthcare challenges. The Swedish government see this as a prioritized area and has together with Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (SKL) signed on a vision to become the world leader in E-health by the year 2025. Studies have shown that E-health can give substantial cost savings with up to 180 billion SEK in saving yearly. We have in this thesis investigated to what extent E-health solutions in the area of chronic diseases are used by Regions/Counties as well as the outcome from a cost saving perspective. Problem formulation and the questions that have been investigated are, which E-health solutions are the different Swedish Regions/County councils (Landsting) using for chronic diseases and what are the cost (and capacity) benefits? What challenges are seen to implement new E-health solutions? We have been using the case study method in our research with interviews and questionnaires with the Regions/County councils as our main source of information. In our contacts we have explained that answers given in the general discussion will be anonymous and not to be linked to any specific Region/County council. This approach was made to get frankly and informative answers. Key findings are that there are today not many E-health solutions for chronic diseases made available by the County councils and the ones offered are generally not reaching a large percentage of the population with those diseases. The implementation curve for E-healthsolutions has been slow, but it differs considerably between regions. We can see that in the northern regions with more rural areas focus is put on solutions to solve the challenges with geographical distance to the patient. In the southern regions with more urban areas the regions more commonly use models to facilitate care for the patient in their home environment. We see a large potential to both improve quality of life for many people as well as reducing costs for healthcare by introducing digital tools in the area of chronic diseases. Especially methods easily accessed for a large part of the population through the 1177.se portal that can be used without extensive support from healthcare staff is something we see as an important area. Those methods have a potential to reach and impact a large part of the population without using much of healthcare resources. We suggest that regions collaborate in order to evaluate and introduce those systems and in the end reach a larger part of the populatio