Zdeněk Gütter

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eHealth services to promote the quality and availability of health care, and their safety

Information and communication technologies have enabled the emergence of a range of e-health services, or more modern, digital health care. These services contribute to improving quality and time and space availability of health care in a number of countries. Their implementation in the Czech Republic is still slow for many reasons. Furthermore, telemedicine, telehealth, telecare, or mHealth applications have the potential to increase the safety of care provided as they reduce the impact of the human factor, including written records. However, they also present various security risks that need to be kept in mind and create measures to limit them. Security threats are attacks where transmission of information by telecommunication networks between the patient and the care provider is interrupted, the stored information is erased, the information is intercepted, modified, or even manufactured. However, there may be other events caused by failures of the technologies used, which are the entire chain. Of course, medical staff and technical support are also involved in the resulting service effect. The significance of adverse events caused by attacks, device malfunctions or human failures is not the same for all digital healthcare applications; it increases with the ability of the service to influence the treatment process performed on distance, and the importance of transmitted information. Data security and data protection requirements form 2 out of a total of 18 critical factors that affect service success in practice. These success factors generally refer to external conditions, human resources, planning and service operation. The design and subsequent deployment of a new digital health service is therefore a complex process requiring multi-professional team interaction.

Zdeněk Gütter, PhD

Zdeněk Gütter, PhD has his expertise in healthcare innovations based on information and communication technologies. Besides system oriented aspects such as integration of care, he focuses on the tools for assessment of technologies and telemedicine services, implementation and evaluation of impacts. He is particularly involved in research in the area of telemedicine applied to healthcare of patients with chronic diseases. He coordinates programs and EU projects for the Czech National eHealth Center (NTMC) of the University Hospital Olomouc (UHO).

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