The European Union is facing a convergence of socio-economic and technological factors that may both challenge and offer opportunities to Europe’s healthcare players. People rightly want to be protected against illness and disease and are demanding advanced health practices using state of the art medical protocols combined with technological innovation. Telemedicine, as one of the fields that the e-Health marked is composed of, may provide a partial solution.The goal of this dissertation is to undertake a marketing planning process related to the case of an Italian company called Telbios, with the aim of analyzing the probability of success of an e-Health service business idea through a marketing plan. It will be developed taking into consideration the launch of a new e-Health service to monitor chronic patients, and elderly and fragile people, who need frequent vital parameters observation, both for care continuity outside of the hospital and for disease surveillance that could, over time, be a cause of death. The current Italian National Health Plan for 2006-2008 focuses on the re-launch of health research, innovative processes and operational knowledge development, and guarantees the constant and timely adaptation of the Italian sanitary system to the European scientific community and technological innovations. The National Healthcare System – SSN is composed of: 47,157 GPs for primary care; 842 hospitals and 509 clinics of which 461 are private accredited, providing hospital care. It generated a total health expenditure for the essential levels of assistance (LEA) of € 100 billion in 2007 (€ 1680 pro-capita quota) including a deficit of € 8,3 billion. The adoption of e-Health services by the private or public healthcare systems could contribute to improving people’s lifestyle and healthcare quality as part of a population health management concept.According to the Market Research Report: “Healthcare Market in Italy”, and the AIOP “Health & Hospitals in Italy” 2007 annual report, the Italian public’s consistent complaints about SSN including poor service, chronic delays, and inadequate medical equipment, have created increasing demand for private healthcare services. Telbios could take advantage of this by, introducing the vital parameters telemonitoring services as a tool to reinforce its role as a healthcare provider and to introduce a substantial revenue stream; according to the forecasted figures of the 2009-2011 Business Plan including IPO............. ( download complete text )

Marco Romani was born in Rome in 1964, graduated with a Master of Business Administration at the University of Malta, Link Campus, in 2008, presenting a thesis on "Marketing planning for e-Health company in the EU community. He started his professional career more than 20 years ago in the field of Telecommunication and Information technology as employee of Telespazio, Wandel & Goltermann, Teleo, Viasat and Ray Way (multimedia consultant). Over time he was in charge of Project Management and Marketing & Sales Dept; in 2004 he moved to Telbios – telemedicine & e-health service, as International Business Manager.

For any questions please refer to the following mail address:

marco.romani@alice.it