Title: Success factors for national eHealth strategies: a comparative analysis of the Australian and German eHealth system

Authors: Isabella Eigner; Andreas Hamper; Nilmini Wickramasinghe; Freimut Bodendorf

Addresses: Chair of Information Systems (Services, Processes and Intelligence), FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Lange Gasse 20, 90403 Nuremberg, Germany ' Chair of Information Systems (Services, Processes and Intelligence), FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Lange Gasse 20, 90403 Nuremberg, Germany ' Health Informatics Management, Epworth HealthCare, Australia; Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Bldg. BC Level 4, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood VIC 3125, Australia ' Chair of Information Systems (Services, Processes and Intelligence), FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Lange Gasse 20, 90403 Nuremberg, Germany

Abstract: The Australian and German healthcare systems share similar traits in insurance and healthcare management. Both nations have also embarked upon national eHealth strategies to connect stakeholders and enable collaboration in healthcare services throughout their respective countries. While Australia has focused on a platform-based approach initially termed 'personally controlled electronic health record', Germany introduced the 'electronic health card', mandatory for every publicly insured person. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the Australian and German eHealth systems to determine commonalities, barriers and success factors of both strategies. A combined PESTLE/SWOT-analysis is used. Results show the key advantages and obstacles of both approaches and identify relevant areas for successful eHealth implementation.

Keywords: eHealth; Australia; Germany; SWOT analysis; PESTLE analysis; PCEHR; MyHealthRecord; electronic health card; EHC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2019.103681

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2019 Vol.21 No.4, pp.399 - 424

Received: 05 Dec 2016
Accepted: 30 Nov 2017
Published online: 22 Nov 2019 *

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