Orange launches healthcare e-solutions

[7 November 2007 - 10h05]
[mis à jour le 9 November 2007 à 09h56]

Isolation can be an enemy. But in future, medical practices in both urban and rural areas will be able to benefit from an advanced communications platform. For medical practitioners in isolated situations, ICT will be a must and hospitals too will be able to depend on communications technology to overcome isolation.

And this applies to both patients and medical staff. So it comes as no surprise that Orange France Télécom, a long-established operator in the field of telecommunications, should take the plunge with this new venture. At the centre of the operation is the company – Orange Healthcare – which will look after all the group’s “health” applications.

The company’s executive vice president, Thierry Zylberberg, told us of his desire to “create a successful union between healthcare and information technology”. But the challenge is by no means an easy one, given that in France both patients and medical workers are proving very lukewarm about the concept of cyberhealth. In France, land of the “Computing and Freedom Law”, telephone consultations and on-line medical records are experiencing a harder time of it than elsewhere.

An IPSOS-Orange Healthcare survey is testimony to this. The French are lagging behind their fellow Europeans in this respect with only 37% of patients prepared to use the internet to transmit data about their health. As far as practitioners are concerned, barely one out of two (54%) considers using the internet to obtain information on their patients. On the other hand, 71% say that they are prepared to exchange information with other doctors and to share data.

“This discrepancy in perception between France and its European neighbours could be explained by a certain reticence due to the nature of the doctor/patient relationship”, agrees Thierry Zylberberg. But this is no obstacle to determined ambition. “The Colomba bracelet – a geolocalisation system using a GPS-based wristband [editor’s note] – was designed to give greater freedom to people with Alzheimer’s disease and cut down on the risk of them disappearing.” And in the field of medical data transmission, the company is working “on their interpretation with medical care networks and hospital facilities. The same is also true of home care services – another crucial area for dependent patients and those being cared for at home”.

Impressive progress

There is no shortage of openings in urban medicine…. And in the hospital environment, Orange Healthcare is currently launching “its first e-healthcare offering designed to improve patient comfort and care quality”. Known as Connected Hospital – which says a great deal about the programme’s international ambitions – this “solution” comprises a number of facilities for both patients and staff. For patients there is a multimedia terminal above the bed which allows them to “make phone calls, access the internet and various games, check their email and videos on demand or television, and access information about the facility and the facility’s medical staff”.

For healthcare professionals there are mobile terminals for “voice-data” exchange, interactive terminals, geolocalisation patient wristbands and devices that make it possible to monitor – or even assist – healthcare workers in isolated situations. This represents a genuine step forward for the safety of staff in certain vulnerable positions such as nursing staff on night duty and medical staff working in the emergency services.

Obviously, these advances are potentially “perplexing” for patients who are by definition in a fragile condition. They are, however, a welcome step forward and will, without doubt, come into widespread use. But their success depends on convincing both patients and healthcare professionals that they can’t do without them.

Source : Ipsos-Orange survey carried out between July and September 2007 in five European countries (France, Great Britain, Spain, Poland and Sweden) on a representative sample of the general public and doctors, 26 September 2007; Interview with Thierry Zylberberg, 10 October 2007; Orange France Télécom, 24 October 2007.

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