eHEALTH DIGITAL SETUP BENEFITS DURING COVID-19: MCDM PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Digitalization of health organizations implies implementing and enforcing the eHealth concept as an integral part of health information systems. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic health organizations of the European Union, member states faced certain restrictions and limitations in the provision of health services through the usual physical healthcare system infrastructure. The accelerated need to provide real-time health services while monitoring the performance of a large number of patients’ health parameters has led to the widespread use of digital health solutions. Virtual health services enabled more efficient allocation of health organization resources in emergencies during COVID-19, which includes gathering, processing, and analyzing health big data and on that basis virtual monitoring of infected patients, virtual health assessment, and video-teleconferencing between health organization stakeholders. Accelerated online reporting on patient status, sharing results via smart health applications, and using electronic health record instruments have enabled more efficient responses by healthcare professionals. Also, eHealth’s “digital toolbox” have been reduced operating costs, data redundancy, and significantly increased interoperability in compliance with Internet security protocols. Digital data transmission in virtual health communities has provided strong support for making the right real-time decisions when providing health services during a pandemic. Accordingly, this study aims to determine the ranking among EU member states in the digital health services utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting a multi-criteria decision-making analysis. Utilizing the multi-criteria decision-making method- PROMETHEE I, EU countries will be ranked based on values of the following analyzed indicators from the Eurostat Database for 2020: Making an appointment with a practitioner via the website, Seeking health information using the Internet, Accessing personal health records online and Internet use for other health services via a website or app instead of having to go to the hospital or visit a doctor. In this way, PROMETHEE benchmarks development disparities in healthcare digitalization among EU countries to find EU leaders in the eHealth digital setup.