Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Surgical outcomes have greatly improved, but challenges remain, especially the provision of high-value, patient-centred care. Evidence suggests that multimodal “prehabilitation” interventions before elective surgeries may improve outcomes and patient experiences. The Austrian Prehab2Rehab Project tests the feasibility and acceptability of digitally supported prehabilitation interventions. To support scalability and industrial exploitation, prehabilitation is also evaluated from health policy and health economics perspectives. The current aims were to thematically analyse Austria’s national eHealth strategy (eHS), map inclusion and relevance of prehabilitation and rehabilitation concepts, and conduct an exploratory comparison with international and national peer policies.
METHODS: 18 sources from Austria, the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Health Organization, Germany, and Switzerland were included in a multi-component exploratory policy analysis using document analysis and inductive and deductive thematic analysis supported by iterative, prompt-based generative AI. Alignment points between individual strategies and between strategies and generic care pathway stages were mapped, and gaps identified.
RESULTS: 10 distinct themes were identified in the Austrian eHS: six core themes, two enabling themes, and two cross-cutting themes. Despite individual focal differences, all sources contained comparable themes. Differences reflect the diverse roles the entities have: international organisations embrace wider perspectives, covering higher-level aspects such as cross-border interoperability, legal mandates, and health systems improvement, versus the more operational content of the national strategies. The exception was the larger focus on environmental sustainability in Austria’s eHS. No source addresses pathway care provision granularly; pathway stages, including prehabilitation, are implicitly addressed through extrapolation of functional components. Rehabilitation is almost exclusively addressed implicitly, except by the WHO.
CONCLUSIONS: Although unnamed, digital prehabilitation services are strongly aligned with the Austrian national eHealth strategy and could function as a best-practice system-adoption pilot following a three-part implementation plan combining lifecycle continuity, digital infrastructure, and governance and trust.