Available online 1 December 2023, 104950

19.4% of the EU population declared insufficient access due to waiting lists

The highest digital readiness is among the Nordic countries, Spain, and Malta

More integrated digital health plan for the EU should recognize regional diversity

Building digital infrastructure and excellent management of new systems should improve access

Digitalization of healthcare systems is a great opportunity to address inequalities in access to healthcare in the European Union. There is an urgent need to build on what we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, where digital health technologies were integrated swiftly to limit challenges in healthcare delivery. We created a database for the 27 European Union countries from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), and other Eurostat databases. We performed k-means cluster analysis to group EU countries along two dimensions: inequalities in access to medical services and level of digitalization. We identified five distinct clusters: two clusters with high, two clusters with moderate, and one cluster with low unmet need for healthcare. Regarding digitalization, only one cluster comprising the Nordic countries, Spain and Cyprus exhibit high digital readiness. A cluster comprising the most developed countries in Western Europe represents moderate levels of both unmet need for healthcare and digitalization. For most EU countries, there is still a need to build digital infrastructure for the healthcare industry, which in the long term may increase the number of digital solutions used by both patients and healthcare professionals. Policy makers across the EU need to consider investing in initiatives that would support digital health solutions as an effective means of healthcare provision and healthcare management.

Healthcare access

digitalization

EU

clustering

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.