Austria’s eHealth strategy
June 2024
Strategies and Action Plans
Author: The Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care, and Consumer Protection
Austria’s eHealth strategy represents a holistic approach to integrating digital health solutions into its healthcare system. It emphasises accessibility, innovation, data security, and healthcare quality. With a strong focus on telehealth, digital literacy, and infrastructure development, it aims to create a resilient healthcare system that leverages digital technologies to provide better, more efficient care. Key strategic goals include improving digital access to the healthcare system, expanding telehealth services, enhancing infrastructure, and fostering innovation.
The strategy is centred around eight strategic goals:
- Enabling digital access to the healthcare system
- Creating telehealth prevention and care services
- Developing public health telematics infrastructure (GTI)
- Providing central eHealth services and components
- Establishing health-related registers
- Strengthening secondary use of health data
- Making innovation accessible
- Strengthening digital skills
The strategy outlines detailed operational goals and measures for each strategic objective. These measures are divided into short-term (2024-2026), medium-term (2026-2028), and long-term (beyond 2028) actions to ensure timely implementation.
- Short-term priorities include expanding digital appointment services, developing telemedicine services, and setting up processes for online consultation systems.
- Medium-term priorities include further integration of digital tools in healthcare, creating a unified national health portal, and refining regulatory frameworks for digital health services.
- Long-term priorities aim to ensure continuous innovation and system improvements, such as more advanced applications of AI and big data in healthcare, ensuring system resilience and security, and expanding the use of telehealth.
The strategy is a living document, meaning it will be updated periodically. Monitoring frameworks will track the progress of digital health projects and their effectiveness, while evaluation mechanisms will assess the impact on healthcare delivery, access, and quality. Updates to the strategy will coincide with national financial cycles, with a significant revision planned for 2028.