The World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe has released an evidence-based support tool to help countries strengthen their telemedicine services.

The tool aims to support telemedicine services at different levels, from individual health facilities to nationwide health systems.

“We continue to see clear benefits of telemedicine, both for patients and health-care professionals,” said Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, director of country health policies at WHO Europe. “These include shorter waiting times, better follow-up and management of health conditions, reduced costs, and improved accessibility of health-care services. Implementing new technologies into mature health systems can be a challenging task, so we at WHO Europe are glad to support countries in their digital transformation, including through this new guidance for telemedicine.”

Telemedicine can be defined as using telecommunications technologies to support the delivery of medical, diagnostic and treatment-related services where distance is a critical factor. It is demonstrated to be an accessible, disability-inclusive, and cost-effective approach that provides vital care and reduces morbidity and mortality.

Evolving health-care needs, emergencies and climate-related impacts are putting pressure on health systems in the WHO European region and around the world. Telemedicine and other digital health tools have played an important part in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic by offering innovative ways to deliver health-care services remotely.

The 2023 report on the state of digital health in the WHO European region showed that 78% of WHO Europe member states directly address telehealth in their policies or strategies. However, despite the positive impact, telemedicine adoption and deployment remain uneven. Some of the challenges are posed by a lack of comprehensive guidelines to support telemedicine services.

“While most countries in the WHO European region recognise the value of telehealth, less than half of them evaluate telehealth programmes,” said David Novillo Ortiz, regional adviser at WHO Europe. “Evaluation is an essential component of any digital health intervention, as it helps us see what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to be adjusted. The WHO support tool is designed to help decision-makers continuously monitor telemedicine services and evaluate them at critical points, allowing the findings to support strategic planning.”

A priority of WHO Europe is to provide technical assistance and expertise to support countries in developing high-quality telemedicine services. The support tool, developed with guidance from the Open University of Catalonia, incorporates the best available international telemedicine knowhow to help those designing, developing, implementing, optimising and evaluating the implementation of a telemedicine service.

By using the tool, stakeholders can determine their level of readiness for a telemedicine service, define a vision, identify necessary changes, resources, skills and infrastructure, as well as monitor and evaluate a telemedicine service.

The tool (iris.who.int/handle/10665/378200) has been designed in line with the priorities of the regional digital health action plan for the WHO European region and the WHO (www.who.int) global strategy on digital health.