July 2, 2015 - Top performing countries for eHealth deployment among hospitals are Denmark (66%), Estonia (63%), Sweden and Finland (both 62%). Full country profiles are available, according to a study on European acute care hospitals, "European Hospital Survey- Benchmarking Deployment of eHealth services (2012-2013).

The report presents results and findings related to eHealth adoption and use in acute hospitals in all 28 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. In the survey, the Joint Research Centre IPTS developed two composite indicators on eHealth deployment and eHealth availability & use and made a comparison with a previous survey carried out in 2010. The results suggest that the deployment of eHealth in European acute care hospitals has increased over the period 2010-2013 (from an average of 0.39 to 0.42 in a range of 0 to 1). The two functionalities with the highest usage levels when they are available are those that allow viewing or inputting information about laboratory teset results (96%) and about the reports of radiology test results (95%) on electronic health record systems (EHR).

Moreover, the gap between best performers (mostly Nordic countries) and less advanced countries (mostly Eastern European and Greece) in hospital eHealth deployment has narrowed. Advanced eHealth functionalities are not widely used across hospitals, however, when available, they are quite popular. For example, digital archiving of radiology images is available in just 53% of EU hospitals, but in almost all of these (92%) it is fully used.

The results also suggest that connectivity is still lagging behind, as most of the hospitals do not share electronically medical information that they produce/store in this format. Finally, the vast majority of hospitals do not allow patients to access their complete health records online thus preventing more involvement in their healthcare.

Source: Digital Agenda for Europe. European Hospital Survey - Benchmarking Deployment of eHealth services (2012-2013). https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/european-hospital-survey-benchmarking-deployment-ehealth-services-2012-2013