Northern Ireland’s Department of Health and Social Services is getting set to issue a tender for the supply of telehealth services to cover 5,000 people by 2011.
The initiative will see Northern Ireland invest £46m in telemedicine services to better support chronic disease management.
Non-UK readers may not be aware that Northern Ireland has one integrated health and social care agency with responsibility for the planning, delivery, finance and regulation of health and social care together. This cuts out the tremendous amount of overhead in terms of time, staff and general cost that bedevils health and social care services working together locally in England, where they are organisationally and culturally separate.
This item from E-Health Europe makes an interesting contrast with the English Department of Health’s announcement above.