Web portals, sensors, electronic records, video communication, on-line gaming, and mobile apps: these are all examples of information and communication technologies (ICT) applications or devices that might cause benefits to healthcare. ICT has the potential to dramatically change the way individuals or society see the sector and provide tremendous opportunities for supporting professionals, improving effectiveness and efficiency. Healthcare organizations have become more and more challenged on how to assure a fair return from ICT investments. Thus, the application of project management in health is important because it allows more productivity and, as a direct result, more accessibility, higher quality care, and a safer environment to patients. The study of the success of these initiatives has become vitally important for the hospital's performance. The chapter collects relevant data and provide recommendations about the perceived benefits of ICT project implementations, proposing a review of the published work to provide some insights into the benefits of these implementations.
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While promoting population health has been the classic goal of public health practice and policy (Dawson and Verweij, 2007), in recent decades, new objectives in terms of autonomy and equality have been introduced (Munthe, 2008). Improving the health of the population is the defining goal of health systems; health system performance should therefore be viewed primarily from the perspective of how health systems manage to improve the overall average level of population health and reduce inequalities in health (WHO, 2007).
The world has witnessed significant health gains in recent decades due not only to advances in science, technology and medicine, but also in expanding infrastructure, rising incomes, better nutrition, sanitation, literacy and opportunities for women (Dzenowagis, 2005). While promoting population health has been the classic goal of public health practices and policy, in recent decades new objectives in terms of autonomy and equality have been introduced (Munthe, 2008).
Healthcare systems around Europe are facing major challenges related to chronic diseases, demographic changes, nursing shortages, medical accidents and increasing costs (EC, 2009; WHO, 2011, 2015). The proportion of people over 65 is expected to almost double by 2050 (Eurostat, 2005) and average public spending for health and long-term care in OECD countries may rise to 10-13% of the GDP (WHO, 2011). Today, the problem of improving healthcare delivery in the developed countries is more about the equitable distribution of available resources to the population than about technological issues (Bukachi & Pakenham-Walsh, 2007).
Many hospitals around the world are moving away from paper-based health information and implementing technological solutions to facilitate and improve the process of patient care via the generation of electronic health records (Caldeira et al., 2012). The main goal of IS/IT is to manage information from all healthcare-related activities, including planning, monitoring, coordination, and decision making. The real-time access, exchange and receipt of clinical data provided by the system have improved clinical documentation, reduced the duplication of care services, and supported better decision making related to patient care (Mäenpää et al., 2009). IS/IT are designed to support clinicians in accessing and working with a variety of patient information (Gruber et al., 2009) and promoting healthcare quality information sharing (Beuscart-Ze´phir et., 2001).
Healthcare systems are organised and financed in different ways across the EU Member States, but most Europeans would agree that universal access to quality healthcare, at an affordable cost to both individuals and society at large, is a basic need. Moreover, this is one of the common values and principles in EU health systems (Eurostat, 2013).
Since the 1990´s, the health sector has sought to improve its effectiveness and efficiency by adopting ICT solutions to increase the levels of services quality, namely, patient safety, organisational efficiency and patient satisfaction (Bates and Gawande, 2000). The aim of ICT for healthcare is to improve the quality, access and efficacy of healthcare for all citizens (Ammenwerth et al., 2004; EC, 2009). ICT for healthcare have been referred as a key instrument that facilitate communication, processing and transmission of information by electronic means, with the aim of improving health (Bukachi & Pakenham-Walsh, 2007; Drury, 2005; EC, 2009; Häyrinen et al., 2008). The ICT usage in health is a means to reach a series of desired outcomes across the entire health ecosystem and are part of the continuous quality improvement of healthcare: According to Brandrud et al. (2011), three main key success factors must be guaranteed: (1) Reliable information; (2) Engagement of all stakeholders in all phases of the work improvement; (3) A proper infrastructure involving multidisciplinary teams.