National Strategic Plan for Telehealth (PENTS) Portugal

The National Strategic Plan for Telehealth (PENTS) is the first strategic plan for telehealth in Portugal and one of the first worldwide. Its vision is to create a broad strategy that reflects the role of telehealth in the National Health Service (SNS), in line not only with the National Health Plan Revision and Extension to 2020, but also with the Programme of the 21st Constitutional Government and Health 2020: a European policy framework and strategy for the 21st century (WHO). eHealth, telehealth and telemedicine are currently areas of growing importance in the context of a health sector highly pressured by external factors such as economic-financial, political-legal, demographic, technological, educational, socio-cultural and organisational. The aim of PENTS is to define a strategy for leveraging telehealth, taking advantage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as a valid means of managing health and its services. Consequently, the use of telehealth will have to boost the development of the health sector in Portugal in terms of gains in health and quality of life, as well as operational efficiency. Telehealth offers new answers to major challenges, including accessibility and proximity to healthcare, integration of care, empowerment of citizens, patients and carers in the SNS, among others. An important catalyst for digital transformation in health.