E-DIMEM: an economic model to estimate the costs of e-disease management

In order to estimate the cost of generic clinical guidelines based on telemedicine services for chronic patients, an economic model (E-DIMEM) has been defined. This model is designed to help health suppliers and managers to plan for the future. It is essentially a workflow composed by diagnosis and therapeutic activities. The cost of each workflow activity is related to healthcare providers (activity agents), drugs, instruments, telemedicine services, and type of specialized healthcare centers used (hospital, clinics, etc.). This model performs multidimensional analysis. A web service based on the E-DIMEM has been implemented.