Portuguese Ministry of Health introduces one-of-a-kind national telehealth plan

Portugal is leading telehealth developments across the world with the newly introduced National Strategic Telehealth Plan (PENTS).

PENTS was launched by the Ministry of Health in late 2019, with the aim of advancing a new telehealth approach to healthcare. The new scheme is expected to harmonise telehealth across the country by scaling up good examples and maximising their impact.

Micaela Seeman Monteiro, director of the National Telehealth Center, said: “Many of our telehealth services are local. Sometimes they do not reflect real organisational change and therefore may lack sustainability when great people leave. Only through a national strategy, with a clear overview of the goals to be achieved and supported by policy-makers, managers, professionals, patients and caregivers will it be possible to turn initiatives into an articulated and synergistic system, which is more than the sum of its parts.”

Monteiro continued: “The regulatory framework has to become more robust in order to increase trust. The education of healthcare professionals must include digital health. Citizens’ digital health literacy must also increase.”

The plan includes input from 50 institutional stakeholders and experts across the health spectrum. This includes information and advice from Saúde em Diálogo, a platform that combines 52 patient associates. This allows for patient contribution to help shape the future of telehealth across the country.

“The strategy emphasises patient centrality as it focuses on telehealth as an important means for care integration. Patients and informal caregivers play here an important role in co-managing health – particularly in the setting of chronic disease multi-morbidity,” Monteiro explained.

Telemonitoring has become an insightful path for patient help across the country, The Portuguese government has launched a special program for chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic heart failure. This has meant that emergency episodes have reduced by 50% and unplanned hospital admissions by 70% among the patients who have taken part in the telemonitoring service so far.

For Portuguese people managing their health, a whole range of digital tools are available with high usage rates. The online Citizen Area (RSE Área do Cidadão) allows people to access their electronic health records, book an appointment with a GP and check their vaccination card. There are now over 2,250,000 users, a number which on average increases by 300 users a day.

The new Carteira telehealth app is hoping to add new features in the future as well, including teleconsultations. This update will enable video calls within the app for healthcare professionals to contact and engage other healthcare professionals in other departments or practices. Preliminary testing is already being run and the service is hoping to begin next year.

These teleconsultations have already been shown to work well between healthcare providers and streamlines information transfer between services and health professionals. Some uses include support video calls, sharing of clinical images and lab tests results. The app has already connected over 200 healthcare facilities and over 21,000 teleconsultations have been held since January and August 2019.