Telemedicinális projektek megjelenésének néhány földrajzi aspektusa

Abstract

Nowadays telemedicine has increasing role in health-policy and health services; moreover e-health - the term is often used as a synonym of telemedicine - becomes more common phrase in public media. Nonetheless the definition is still unknown. The aim of this study is to draw the society's attention to this service. The main questions of the paper are: how and how much can telemedicine make healthcare services more effective? What geographical aspects can be detected, and how can we map telemedicine services and projects? The study briefly illustrates the methodology and the work phases describing the latest results of my PhD research. The data were collected during consultations with professionals and from National Development Agency's (NDA) healthcare-project database. The results of the consultations gave three major consequences. The first is that in Hungary no overall database about telemedicine projects. The second main feature is in connection with opposing interests of different stakeholders. The third feature is that these projects are really rudimentary and short lived. By examining health-care projects in NDA's database it turned out that in the period of 2007-2013 there was 110 successful telemedicine projects which involved 96 different settlements. The majority of the settlements were small towns (population with 10-30.000) where the projects were planned to develop the outpatient services. Besides this regional centres also appear as applicants, where the main objects of the projects are hospital developments.