Moving telemedicine from pilot to scale – Quick Guide to the 18 Momentum Critical Success Factors

The answers to the question “What is needed to deploy telemedicine or telehealth?” include the right context, involvement of the key people, good planning and sound “running” of the process.

The Momentum blueprint already offers critical success factors and performance indicators that help decision makers to scale up healthcare services from a distance through information technology. It also delivers a self-assessment toolkit that helps an organisation determine whether it is “ready” for telemedicine deployment. The Blueprint and supporting documents will remain available in this website at http://telemedicine-momentum.eu.

The recent Momentum in a Nutshell Leaflet provides a good overview how the Blueprint may help your service to scale up.

Although Momentum ended in January 2015, key experts and contributors to Momentum will remain available to provide support on how to use the Momentum toolkit, and can be contracted to help an organisation or region deploy telemedicine and share their experience.

Overview

What is needed to deploy telemedicine in routine care? The right context, involvement of the key people, good planning and sound “running” of the process.

The Momentum Blueprint offers critical success factors and performance indicators that help decision makers to scale up healthcare services from a distance through information technology. It also delivers a self-assessment toolkit that helps organisations determine whether they are “ready” for telemedicine deployment. The Blueprint and supporting documents are available on the Momentum website.

“Telemedicine deployment is not rocket science: it will work if the critical elements are in place” says Marc Lange, coordinator of the Momentum project and General Secretary of EHTEL. “The Blueprint distils the key learnings from the Momentum project: it can be used as a kind of cookbook or set of guidelines for doing telemedicine scale-up.”

The Momentum Blueprint builds on two earlier versions which were released in May 2014 and December 2014. As a result of the feedback from various audiences invited to validate the Blueprint as well as personnel from the Sørlandet hospital and University of Agder (in Kristiansand, Norway) who were invited to test it, the Blueprint has been substantially edited and abridged; the explanations and the order of the critical success factors were improved; and the self-assessment toolkit was added. This toolkit is a combination of the Telemedicine Readiness Self-Assessment Tool (TREAT) and Momentum’s critical success factors. Used in the right circumstances, the toolkit helps to gauge the level of readiness of an organisation by way of a comprehensive questionnaire and a consultative workshop involving all the relevant stakeholders. It ensures that the people in the organisation share the vision of scaling-up and are committed to its success.

The Blueprint comes from the Momentum project, a three-year initiative of European eHealth stakeholder associations and competence centres that was co-funded by the European Commission . The project contributed to the achievement of the second part of Key Action 13 of the Digital Agenda, set out in the Communication of the European Commission of 19 May 2010 (COM (2010) 245): “[…] to achieve by 2020 widespread deployment of telemedicine services”.

Although Momentum ended in January 2015, a mechanism and business model is being developed for Momentum consortium members to be made available on contract to help an organisation or region deploy telemedicine and share their positive experiences with others.

A proposal for support in learning more on the Blueprint and in using it can be obtained by contacting the consortium via info@localhost.

Momentum, 25 February 2015

How to move telemedicine from pilot to scale

Brussels, 5 February 2015:  What is needed to deploy telemedicine?  The right context, involvement of the key people, good planning and sound “running” of the process.  The Momentum Blueprint, published today in its final version, offers critical success factors and performance indicators that help decision makers to scale up healthcare services from a distance through information technology.  And it delivers a self-assessment toolkit that helps an organisation determine whether it is “ready” for telemedicine deployment.  The Blueprint and supporting documents are available here:

Momentum Blueprint (validated, final version) (pdf, 0.9 MB)

Momentum test phase report (pdf, 1.4 MB)

The Blueprint comes from the Momentum project, a three-year initiative of European eHealth stakeholder associations and competence centres that was co-funded by the European Commission.  Although Momentum ended in January 2015, key experts and contributors to Momentum will remain available to provide support on how to use the Momentum toolkit, and can be contracted to help an organisation or region deploy telemedicine and share their experience.

“Telemedicine deployment is not rocket science:  it will work if the critical elements are in place” says Marc Lange, coordinator of the Momentum project and General Secretary of EHTEL. “The Blueprint distils the key learnings from the Momentum project:  it can be used as a kind of cookbook or set of guidelines for doing telemedicine scale-up.”

The final Momentum Blueprint builds on two earlier versions which were released in May 2014 and December 2014.  This final version was substantially edited and abridged; the explanations and the order of the critical success factors were improved; and the self-assessment toolkit was added.  The toolkit is a combination of the Telemedicine Readiness Self-Assessment Tool (TREAT) and Momentum’s critical success factors.  Used under the right circumstances, the toolkit helps to gauge the level of readiness of an organisation by way of a comprehensive questionnaire and a consultative workshop involving all stakeholders.  It can ensure that the people in the organisation share the vision of scaling-up and are committed to its success.

About the project:
The Momentum project convened telemedicine experts and stakeholders from more than 20 organisations in Europe. The project ended in January 2015.  The website and the Blueprint remain online.  Key contributors are also committed to preserving the project legacy and to help other organisations in their own journey to scale.  The project was funded as a thematic network under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme of the European Commission.  More information is at www.telemedicine-momentum.eu.

Presentations of the fourth and final workshop on 26 September 2014

On 26 November 2014 the Momentum consortium held its fourth and final workshop as part of the annual EHTEL Symposium in Brussels.  The session featured was titled “Three paths to telemedicine deployment” and featured the following speakers and presentations:

Welcome (pdf, 0.2 MB)
Michael Strübin, Continua Health Alliance

Introduction: The Momentum Success Factors (pdf, 6 MB)
Diane Whitehouse, EHTEL

Adapting the Momentum Success Factors in Scotland (pdf, 0.9 MB)
Dr Margaret Whoriskey, Joint Improvement Team, Scotland

Innovative Healthcare Services: Going “beyond the pill” (Presentation not available)
Guy Eiferman, Health Solutions & Services at Merck & Co., France

The Momentum Blueprint and TREAT, a Self-Assessment Tool Tested in Real Life (pdf, 0.9 MB)
Claus Duedal Pedersen and Lise Kvistgaard Jensen, Region of Southern Denmark
Ulrike Knarvik, Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine,
Wenche Tangene, Sørlandet Hospital, Kristiansand, Norway

The discussion played a vital role in validating the final version of the Momentum Blueprint which is expected to be released on 30 January 2015.

All links to the presentations lead to the EHTEL website where all Symposium presentations are available to the public.

 

Deploying telemedicine is hard, but now there is help.  Today the Momentum project released the European telemedicine deployment blueprint to assist “telemedicine doers” introduce healthcare services at distance through information technology.  Telemedicine can make healthcare delivery safer, better and more efficient and thus help address challenges to our healthcare systems, but it can disrupt conventional medicine.  The blueprint for doers describes 18 critical success factors for telemedicine deployment with detail, context, indicators, and descriptions, including an attachment with case studies.  The document can be accessed here:

Momentum Consolidated Blueprint (pdf, 112p, 6MB)

Attachment to Momentum Consolidated Blueprint (pdf, 0.5MB)

The Momentum blueprint builds on an earlier and shorter version of the 18 critical success factors that was released in May 2014.  Since then, healthcare stakeholders from across the EU Member States joined dozens of conference presentations, moderated workshops and online fora to provide feedback on the critical success factors and to contribute to a more detailed and refined document.  The Momentum consortium added in-depth research and consolidated the document in the period since August 2014.

“This consolidated blueprint is the main deliverable of the Momentum project. It caps almost three years of hard work”, says Diane Whitehouse, EHTEL eHealth expert and lead author of the document.  “The whole consortium hopes that this blueprint will help telemedicine doers with their implementations, and make a substantive contribution to the body of knowledge on telemedicine deployment.”

The Momentum project convenes telemedicine experts and stakeholders from more than 20 organisations in Europe. The project will end in January 2015, and the focus in the remaining weeks will be on building its legacy.  This will include a Momentum self-assessment tool and a process to facilitate telemedicine deployment through stakeholder engagement; a thoroughly updated and revised website (which EHTEL, the project coordinator, is committed to maintain after the project end); and the online Momentum forum on LinkedIn that will continue to host discussions about Momentum themes and the online tool.

For more information contact info@localhost.

Two Momentum speakers presented at the ISfTeH Annual International Conference/Carrefour de la Télésanté conference, 16-17 October 2014, in Paris, France:

Tino Marti (TicSalut), member of the EXCO, presented “Momentum success factors and the ITACA project” (pdf, 1.3 MB).

Marc Lange (EHTEL), project coordinator, presented “The secrets of the Telehealth: how to deploy these services at a large-scale?” (pdf, 2MB)

Both speakers appeared in session 5 “Methodological support and efficiency of eHealth”, on Friday, 17 October 2014.

For the full programme and more information go to

http://en.carrefourtelesante.fr/sessions_eng.html

The Momentum project released today five key documents that follow the release of the 18 critical success factors (CSFs) for the deployment of telemedicine last May.

Four of the documents represent a further development and honing of the 18 CSFs, coming after critical feedback from stakeholders and experts from within and outside the network.  The documents, subtitled “blueprint validated by ‘doers’ and stakeholders”, provide more context for each success factor and illustrate how they have applied in selected successful telemedicine deployments examined by Momentum.

The fifth document, Momentum test methodology (D3.3), delivers an action plan for testing Momentum in a real life setting.  The region of southern Norway will apply the critical success factors, in combination with the Telemedicine REadiness Assessment Tool (TREAT), including both an online self-assessment and a facilitated workshop involving all key players.

Interested in learning more?  Download all documents and more at

http://telemedicine-momentum.eu/resources-documents/

Momentum hosted a session at eHealth Forum in Athens on 14 May 2014.

The Secrets of Telehealth: how to deploy services in routine care

For decades, telemedicine and telehealth projects have been receiving a lot of attention from innovative health care professionals. However, only few projects have successfully shifted from lab to routine care. Even fewer have gone from small- to large-scale deployment. Lack of clinical evidence, user adoption, reimbursement and business models have often been identified as the main explanations for this situation. An element that has been much less studied is the lack of deployment method. Unquestionably, this is also a pitfall.

Several organisations and key players in telemedicine across Europe have decided to join forces. They have launched the Momentum project to work on how to deploy telemedicine, by analysing those initiatives which have been successfully deployed and identifying the reasons why they were successful, i.e. their Secrets!

This session was the first opportunity to access the first results of the project, a list of Success Factors which are Critical for the deployment of telemedicine in routine care on a large scale.

Presenters:

pdf-iconThere are more pilots in telehealth than …
Marc Lange, EHTEL and project coordinator for Momentum (Belgium)

pdf-iconCritical Success Factors for a deployment strategy
Rachelle Kaye, AIM and Maccabi Healthcare Services (Israel)

pdf-iconCritical Success Factors for managing organisational change
Peeter Ross, eTervis (Estonia)

pdf-iconCritical Success Factors from a legal, regulatory and security perspective
Ellen K. Christiansen, Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) (Norway)

pdf-iconCritical Success Factors from an ICT perspective
Tino Marti, TicSalut (Spain)

pdf-iconThe case of “German society for patients assistance” (DGP) for validating the Momentum Success Factors
Dr. Steffen Sonntag, Gesellschaft für Patientenhilfe DGP mbH, Munich, Germany

Moderator: Andrea Pavlickova, NHS24 and Action Group B3 on Integrated Care of EIP on AHA

Information about eHealth Forum is available at http://ehealth2014.org

Download here the Momentum_18 Critical Success Factors for Telemedicine Deployment (version 01, 6 May 2014.pdf

 

Athens, 14 May 2014 –Today the Momentum project published a list of 18 factors that are critical to deploying telemedicine successfully into routine health care.  Distilled from an analysis of telemedicine practices by experts from across Europe, these factors will help telemedicine “doers” to build sustainable implementations from the ground up or move experimental pilots into routine care.  Telemedicine, which is care where the healthcare professional and the patient are not in the same room, holds promise for European healthcare systems.  Its widespread deployment will help to improve safety, quality and efficiency of care, and to ensure that citizens have access to healthcare services where and when they need it.

The 18 critical success factors cover overall context (ie, cultural readiness, financing), management aspects (the need for leadership, for a business plan, for change management), legal and security issues (including liability or the regulatory environment for data management), and technology considerations (including interoperability).  They are collected in a short document with annotations available at Momentum_CSFs_v01_6may2014.

These factors require more validation, and the publication of this list begins a public consultation phase.  Momentum invites interested parties to comment via Momentum’s social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook), by email to the consortium, or face-to-face in dissemination events like today’s session at eHealth Forum 2014 in Athens entitled “The Secrets of Telehealth: how to deploy services in routine care”.

Telemedicine in Europe suffers from ‘pilotitis’, a glut of technology experiments that have received start-up subsidies from public or commercial sources to get them off the ground, but which cease to exist once the subsidy is withdrawn,” says Marc Lange, Secretary General of EHTEL and coordinator of the Momentum project. “Our success factors will help the ‘doers’ move their projects into routine care and scale them up to provide real benefits to patients in Europe.”

The Momentum project convenes telemedicine experts and stakeholder organisations from more than 20 organisations in Europe.  The final outcome of the project will be a blueprint for telemedicine deployment which will be published in December 2014.  The project invites all interested parties to comment on the critical success factors, to submit successful practices, and to join the Momentum network.  More dissemination events will be held between May and September 2014.  For an ongoing list and more information go to www.telemedicine-momentum.eu.

About the project: Momentum is a thematic network designed to share knowledge and experience in deploying telemedicine services into routine care. Working together, Momentum’s members who come from all corners of Europe will develop, test and finalise a blueprint for telemedicine deployment that offers guidance for anybody who seeks to move telemedicine from an idea or a pilot to daily practice. The project is funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme of the European Commission, and runs from 2012 to 2014.  More information is at www.telemedicine-momentum.eu.

 

Download here the Momentum_18 Critical Success Factors for Telemedicine Deployment (version 01, 6 May 2014.pdf

The Momentum project has published 21 case studies of successful telemedicine deployments in nine countries.

Based on responses to the Momentum questionnaire in 2012 and 2013, these service descriptions reflect the current operations of telemedicine services that are part of normal healthcare delivery in their countries. They are accompanied by eight country reports that analyse the policy and legal environment for telemedicine.

All reports can be accessed at http://telemedicine-momentum.eu/europe/

The Momentum project invites other telemedicine doers in Europe to submit additional descriptions of services. The sole criteria for the service:

  • It has to be a telemedicine service in daily operation,
  • It is part of the regular way of providing care or treatment to a significant number of patients/citizens,
  • It is funded or reimbursed as part of the normal funding or reimbursement system in your healthcare system.

To submit your service description, please complete and submit the Momentum service description template (Word, 66 KB).

Momentum publishes telehealth testimonials

Momentum publishes a section featuring anecdotes, descriptions and testimonials from across Europe and beyond where telehealth interventions have made a positive difference in the lives of real people. The descriptions come principally from material collected by the Campaign for Telehealth in support of Integrated Care, an initiative of Brussels-based organisations started in 2011.  

To read the testimonials and to learn more about this campaign, go to testimonials.

New members from Portugal and Spain join Momentum 

Momentum welcomes two new members to its network:  IHMT (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) and AQuAS (Catalan Ministry of Spain, Spain).  Both organisations joined Momentum to contribute to the development of the Blueprint for Telemedicine Deployment.  By joining the network, representatives from both organisations will be invited to participate in Momentum work groups and meetings.

Organisational profiles for IHMT and AQuAS were added to the list of Momentum partners.

Interested in joining the Momentum network? Please contact info@localhost.

Momentum organised a session at the European Telemedicine Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 29 October 2013.

State of Telemedicine Across Europe

There are too many pilots in telemedicine and too few are deployed into routine care or taken to scale. The field is at an impasse.

To address this impasse, Momentum is identifying the key factors which enable successful telemedicine deployment, looking at organisational strategies, change management, legal barriers, technology and other issues.

Based on an analysis of select cases, Momentum will be proposing

• A set of guidelines, the blueprint, with success factors and a description of the conditions for these factors to lead to successful deployment, and
• A self-assessment tool for telemedicine practitioners to customise the Momentum Blueprint to their particular case.

This tool will be based on the Telemedicine Readiness Evaluation Assessment Tool (TREAT), developed by CISCO and the University Hospital of Odense (DK) and tested by NHS24 in Scotland.

Presenters:

Prof. George Crooks, OBE, Medical Director NHS 24, UK

Petra Wilson, Director, Public Sector Health Care, Cisco, Belgium

Marc Lange, Secretary General, EHTEL, Momentum Project, Belgium

Download the presentation (pdf, 600KB)

Information about the European Telemedicine Conference is available at telemedicineconference.eu.

Momentum has passed its midpoint and is undergoing its midterm review.  The project prepared its midterm report, of which the following summary is public.

The Momentum midterm review_summary (August 2013) (pdf, 500KB)

We invite comments and suggestions to info@localhost or in our LInkedIn group (click below).

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Momentum co-organised with EHTEL a workshop at conhIT, Berlin, on 9 April 2013.

Rolling out Digital Services in Europe: eHealth and Telemedicine in Routine Daily Care

The Digital Agenda for Europe holds as one key action the ‘widespread deployment of telemedicine services’. The ultimate goal is to make personal health services available by 2020 for all European citizens and patients in support of prevention and the care continuum. This is also seen as a response to the imbalance of growing health needs and sparse resources in health and social care.

This expert workshop will showcase successful services and highlight first steps towards the telemedicine guidelines, i.e. a Blueprint, that the MOMENTUM Network will ultimately deliver.

Presenters:

Introduction (Stephan Schug) pdf
Marc Lange, EHTEL and Momentum Project Co-ordinator, Brusselspdf
Stavroula Petropoulou, Sismanoglio General Hospital, Athenspdf
Rachelle Kaye, Maccabi Health Services, Israelpdf
Stephan Schug, EHTEL, Brussels and DGG e.V., Frankfurt am Mainpdf

Information about conhIT is available at www.conhit.com.

Last September Momentum launched an online questionnaire to gather information about the deployment of telemedicine services.  The deadline was originally set for 1 November.

To allow many respondents to complete their responses, and others to add their services, the deadline has been extended to 21 November 2012.

To learn more about the scope and purpose of the questionnaire please go to Research.

 

Momentum today launched its initial research and data collection phase with an online questionnaire to gather information about the deployment of telemedicine services.  A summary of this online version is now available (Momentum Questionnaire, pdf 0.7 MB).

Here are two supporting documents that may further help you complete the questionnaire:

– Momentum_Q&A (pdf, 100KB) and
– The Momentum glossary (pdf, 300KB)

For any additional questions please contact questionnaire@localhost.

Would you like to participate?

Momentum seeks to gather information and experiences from telemedicine services in daily operation, defined as a service that

– is part of the regular provision of care or treatment to a significant number of patients/citizens, and
– is funded or reimbursed as part of the normal funding or reimbursement procedures.

Momentum also is interested in a terminated service, in other words a failed attempt to deploy a telemedicine service in daily operation.

What we do not seek is information for a project that is based on special funding provided by a public entity (European, national, regional or local government) or by a technology or infrastructure provider.  However, if an attempt was made to convert a pilot into a regular service and it failed, we consider it a terminated service.

The questionnaire is structured in two parts:

1) The introductory part, questions 1-3, that is only to be completed once for each respondent regardless of the number of services included in the questionnaire.
2) The main part, questions 4-39, consisting of four sections (Strategy and management; Organisational implementation and change management; Legal, regulatory and security issues; and Technical infrastructure and market relations), each with a number of sub-topics.

The questionnaire is a mix of open and closed questions in order to balance control of content and allowing for individual views, assessments etc.

If all this applies to you and you would like to participate (or indeed to join the Momentum network) please write to questionnaire@localhost. The deadline for completing the questionnaire is 1 November 2012.

Thursday, 21 June 2012, 8:30 to 12.00
Luleå, Norbotten, Sweden

For Momentum participants and invited guests

8.30

Welcome, introductions, project update
Marc Lange, EHTEL

9.00

Knowledge gathering report
Presentation of initial questionnaire results
Claus Duedal Pedersen, RSDDiscussion

9.30

Highlights of questionnaire results
(with 10-minute presentations and discussion each)

  • Telemedicine strategy and management
    Robert Stewart, SCTT (NHS 24)

9.55

                                   Break

10:15

10:50

11:10

Highlights of questionnaire results (cont’d)

  • Organisational implementation and change management
    Diane Whitehouse, on behalf of Peeter Ross, eEHF
  • Legal, regulatory and security issues related to telemedicine
    Ellen Christiansen, NST
  • Technical infrastructure and market relations
    Montse Meya, TicSalut

11:35

Summary discussion, wrap up, next steps
Claus Duedal Pedersen, RSD

12.00

                                    End

Telemedicine deployment: from pilot to practice
Session, 20 June 2012, 14.30 to 16.00
The House of Arts, Luleå, Sweden

(The seminar was part of the programme of the Arctic Light e-He@lth Conference (ALEC) 2012.)

Agenda

Welcome and introduction
Claus Pedersen, Region of Southern Denmark

Project overview 
Marc Lange, EHTEL

Case studies:

  • Remote dialysis in Norway
    Eli Arild, NST, Norway
  • Telecounselling for neurosurgery in Veneto Region
    Elena Vio, Arsenal IT, Italy
  • Teleictus Network and the Program for Prevention and care of Chronic patients(PPAPC ) in Catalonia
    Dr. Joan Escarrabill Sanglas, Agencia d’Informacio Avaluacio i Qualitat en Salut, Department of Health (Catalonia), Spain

Q&A