Telehealth Adoption by Country 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Jennifer Miller, Digital Health | Last updated: September 23, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Axis Intelligence Research estimates that doctors in 20 European countries delivered about 216 million teleconsultations in 2024 — 8.4% of roughly 2.58 billion doctor consultations. The national spread is the real finding: in Estonia, 35.6% of consultations happened remotely. In Germany, 1.0% did — one consultation in every 98.
Quick Answer
Estonia has the highest telehealth adoption on official data: 35.6% of doctor consultations in 2024 were teleconsultations, according to Eurostat. Portugal (26.1%), Sweden (25.6%), Denmark (23.7%) and Finland (23.6%) follow. On the Remote Consultation Embedding Index (RCEI™) built by Axis Intelligence Research, Estonia scores 97.2 out of 100; Germany scores 15.2 and Luxembourg 3.8.
Key Findings
- Estonia leads Europe on remote care: 35.6% of its doctor consultations in 2024 were teleconsultations, per Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation on Eurostat data.
- Axis Intelligence Research estimates 216 million doctor teleconsultations took place across 20 European countries in 2024, 8.4% of all doctor consultations.
- Germany recorded 0.10 teleconsultations per inhabitant in 2024; at Spain’s rate of 1.54, Axis Intelligence Research estimates it would have logged about 120 million more.
- Spain’s teleconsultation rate fell 50.2% from its 2021 peak, yet Spain still accounts for 34.6% of all teleconsultations in the 20-country Axis Intelligence Research estimate.
- Hungary is the only country among 18 tracked by the RCEI™ whose 2024 teleconsultation rate is its 2020–2024 high (1.34 per inhabitant), per Axis Intelligence Research.
Which Country Uses Telehealth the Most?
The honest way to answer “which country uses telemedicine the most” is to count consultations, not apps downloaded or clinics that say they offer video. Eurostat now publishes exactly that count: doctor consultations per inhabitant, split between in-person visits and teleconsultations — which Eurostat defines as “interactive telemedicine which involves direct and synchronous communication between providers and patients” (Eurostat, Healthcare activities statistics – consultations, data extracted July 2026). A phone or video call with a doctor counts. A portal message answered the next day does not.
Dividing teleconsultations by total consultations gives the remote share — the cleanest cross-country measure of telehealth adoption Axis Intelligence Research could find in official statistics. Axis Intelligence Research computed it for all 20 countries that report both figures in Eurostat’s hlth_hc_phys2 dataset.
Remote share of doctor consultations by country, 2024
| Rank | Country | Teleconsultations per inhabitant | All doctor consultations per inhabitant | Remote share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Estonia | 2.06 | 5.78 | 35.6% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 2 | Portugal | 1.42 | 5.45 | 26.1% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 3 | Sweden | 0.81 | 3.16 | 25.6% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 4 | Denmark | 1.56 | 6.57 | 23.7% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 5 | Finland | 0.98 | 4.16 | 23.6% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 6 | Spain | 1.54 | 7.65 | 20.1% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 7 | Croatia | 1.63 | 8.48 | 19.2% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 8 | Norway | 0.70 | 4.70 | 14.9% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 9 | Slovenia | 0.98 | 6.89 | 14.2% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 10 | Hungary | 1.34 | 10.86 | 12.3% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 11 | Czechia | 1.08 | 9.04 | 11.9% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 12 | Lithuania | 1.17 | 10.18 | 11.5% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 13 | Belgium | 0.94 | 8.89 | 10.6% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 14 | Malta | 0.21 | 2.55 | 8.2% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 15 | Poland | 0.70 | 8.80 | 8.0% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 16 | Liechtenstein | 0.50 | 9.40 | 5.3% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 17 | France | 0.20 | 5.50 | 3.6% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 18 | Germany | 0.10 | 9.80 | 1.0% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 19 | Luxembourg | 0.04 | 5.72 | 0.7% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
| 20 | Romania | 0.00 | 5.80 | 0.0% | Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2; Axis calc. |
Formula: remote share = teleconsultations per inhabitant ÷ all doctor consultations per inhabitant × 100. Greece reports 0.00 teleconsultations per inhabitant but no total, so no share is computed.
Eurostat’s own rounded reading matches ours: it reports Estonia at 36% and Portugal and Sweden “both 26%”. The Axis figures carry one decimal because they are recomputed from the per-inhabitant values.
Teleconsultations per person: a second, different ranking
Share and volume are not the same thing. Sweden’s remote share is third-highest, but Swedes see a doctor only 3.16 times a year, so its 0.81 teleconsultations per inhabitant sit in the middle of the table. Croatia is the mirror image: a 19.2% share of a busy 8.48-consultation system produces 1.63 teleconsultations per person, second only to Estonia’s 2.06. Any ranking that uses only one of the two numbers tells half the story, which is why the RCEI™ below uses both.
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: The denominator is doing a lot of work in this table. A country with few doctor contacts per person can post a high remote share while delivering modest remote volume, and a system with heavy in-person traffic can bury a large teleconsultation program under it. Before quoting any single country’s “adoption rate”, check which of the two it is. Both are real; they answer different questions — how much of care has moved, versus how much remote care a patient actually receives.
Which Countries Have Made Telehealth Permanent? The RCEI™ Ranking
Axis Intelligence Research built the Remote Consultation Embedding Index (RCEI™) to answer a narrower question than “who adopted telehealth”: where has remote consultation become a normal, lasting part of how doctors deliver care? Pandemic-era peaks do not count as embedding. Staying power does.
The RCEI™ combines three components, all drawn from one consistent administrative source (Eurostat hlth_hc_phys2), for the 18 countries with a complete 2020–2024 series:
- S — Remote share (45%): 2024 remote share, scaled so the leader (Estonia, 35.64%) = 100.
- V — Remote volume (30%): 2024 teleconsultations per inhabitant, scaled so the leader (Estonia, 2.06) = 100.
- R — Peak retention (25%): 2024 teleconsultations per inhabitant as a percentage of the country’s 2020–2024 peak.
RCEI™ = 0.45 × S + 0.30 × V + 0.25 × R (0–100 scale). Estonia’s reading: 0.45 × 100.0 + 0.30 × 100.0 + 0.25 × 88.8 = 97.2.
RCEI™ scores by country, 2024 reading (baseline)
| Rank | Country | RCEI™ | S (share, norm.) | V (volume, norm.) | R (retention %) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Estonia | 97.2 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 88.8 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 2 | Denmark | 72.6 | 66.6 | 75.7 | 79.6 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 3 | Portugal | 71.5 | 73.1 | 68.9 | 71.7 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 4 | Finland | 68.3 | 66.1 | 47.6 | 97.0 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 5 | Sweden | 68.0 | 71.9 | 39.3 | 95.3 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 6 | Croatia | 66.0 | 53.9 | 79.1 | 72.1 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 7 | Spain | 60.3 | 56.5 | 74.8 | 49.8 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 8 | Hungary | 60.1 | 34.6 | 65.0 | 100.0 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 9 | Slovenia | 55.1 | 39.9 | 47.6 | 91.6 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 10 | Czechia | 52.4 | 33.5 | 52.4 | 86.4 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 11 | Belgium | 49.2 | 29.7 | 45.6 | 88.7 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 12 | Norway | 48.4 | 41.8 | 34.0 | 77.8 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 13 | Lithuania | 42.2 | 32.2 | 56.8 | 42.5 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 14 | Liechtenstein | 36.3 | 14.9 | 24.3 | 89.3 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 15 | Poland | 29.4 | 22.3 | 34.0 | 36.8 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 16 | France | 24.2 | 10.2 | 9.7 | 66.7 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 17 | Germany | 15.2 | 2.9 | 4.9 | 50.0 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
| 18 | Luxembourg | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 9.5 | Axis Intelligence Research RCEI™ |
This is the RCEI™ baseline reading. Malta and Romania report teleconsultation data only from 2023 and 2022 respectively, so they sit outside the index until a full five-year window exists.
How to read an RCEI™ score
A score above 60 marks a system where remote consultation carries a meaningful share of doctor contact and survived the end of pandemic rules. Spain and Hungary land at almost the same score (60.3 and 60.1) by opposite routes: Spain on volume, despite keeping only 49.8% of its peak; Hungary on retention, with a smaller share but a rate that has climbed every year since 2020 except one. Scores below 30 — Poland, France, Germany, Luxembourg — describe systems where teleconsultation is either marginal in volume or shrinking back toward it.
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: Retention is the component I would watch most closely in the next reading. Peak-year volumes in 2020 and 2021 were emergency behavior; what a system keeps three years later is the closest proxy we have for whether remote consultation was built into scheduling, reimbursement and clinical routines rather than tolerated. The index cannot tell you why a country retained its volume. It tells you where to go looking.
How Many Teleconsultations Happen in Europe Each Year?
Eurostat publishes rates, not counts. Axis Intelligence Research converted each country’s 2024 teleconsultations per inhabitant into an estimated number of teleconsultations by multiplying it by the country’s population on January 1, 2024 (Eurostat tps00001).
Estimated teleconsultations = teleconsultations per inhabitant (2024) × population (1 January 2024)
Across the 20 countries — 339 million people — the estimate sums to about 216 million teleconsultations out of about 2.58 billion doctor consultations, a population-weighted remote share of 8.4%, or 0.64 teleconsultations per person. Restricted to the 18 EU member states in the set, the weighted share is 8.3%.
Estimated doctor teleconsultations by country, 2024
| Country | Estimated teleconsultations, 2024 (millions) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Spain | 74.87 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Poland | 25.63 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Portugal | 15.91 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| France | 13.73 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Hungary | 12.84 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Czechia | 11.77 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Belgium | 11.11 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Denmark | 9.30 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Sweden | 8.55 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Germany | 8.35 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Croatia | 6.30 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Finland | 5.49 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Norway | 3.89 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Lithuania | 3.38 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Estonia | 2.83 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Slovenia | 2.08 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Malta | 0.12 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Luxembourg | 0.03 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Liechtenstein | 0.02 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| Romania | 0.00 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
| 20 countries | 216 | Axis estimate on Eurostat |
Spain alone accounts for 34.6% of the 20-country total. Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Ireland are absent because they do not report a teleconsultation series to Eurostat, so the true European figure is larger than 216 million.
Germany’s and France’s missing teleconsultations
Germany is Europe’s largest population and one of its heaviest users of doctors (9.80 consultations per inhabitant), yet it recorded 0.10 teleconsultations per inhabitant in 2024. Two counterfactual estimates put that gap in consultation terms:
- At Spain’s rate: (1.54 − 0.10) × 83,456,045 = about 120 million additional teleconsultations a year.
- At the 20-country average: (0.64 − 0.10) × 83,456,045 = about 45 million additional teleconsultations.
France shows the same pattern at smaller scale: at Spain’s rate, (1.54 − 0.20) × 68,669,303 = about 92 million more teleconsultations than the roughly 13.73 million Axis Intelligence Research estimates for 2024. These are scenario figures, not forecasts — they size the gap, not the probability of closing it.
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: “One in 98” is the number I would put in front of anyone planning a virtual-care service in Germany. It does not mean German patients reject remote care; the Eurostat series simply shows that synchronous doctor teleconsultations have barely registered in the country’s consultation mix at any point since 2019. For a vendor or payer, that is a market-sizing fact. For a health-policy analyst, it is a question about how teleconsultations are organized and counted — one the consultation data alone cannot settle.
Did Telehealth Use Drop After COVID?
In most of Europe, yes — but far less than the “telehealth bust” narrative implies, and not everywhere. Of the 18 countries with a 2020–2024 series, 12 kept at least 70% of their peak teleconsultation rate in 2024.
Peak vs. 2024: how much remote care each country kept
| Country | Peak rate 2020–2024 (per inhabitant) | Peak year | 2024 rate | Retention | 2024 vs 2019 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hungary | 1.34 | 2024 | 1.34 | 100.0% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Finland | 1.01 | 2023 | 0.98 | 97.0% | 2.80× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Sweden | 0.85 | 2021 | 0.81 | 95.3% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Slovenia | 1.07 | 2022 | 0.98 | 91.6% | 19.60× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Liechtenstein | 0.56 | 2020 | 0.50 | 89.3% | 1.32× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Estonia | 2.32 | 2021 | 2.06 | 88.8% | 1.50× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Belgium | 1.06 | 2021 | 0.94 | 88.7% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Czechia | 1.25 | 2021 | 1.08 | 86.4% | 3.38× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Denmark | 1.96 | 2020 | 1.56 | 79.6% | 0.76× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Norway | 0.90 | 2021 | 0.70 | 77.8% | 7.00× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Croatia | 2.26 | 2021 | 1.63 | 72.1% | 2.23× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Portugal | 1.98 | 2021 | 1.42 | 71.7% | 1.58× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| France | 0.30 | 2020 | 0.20 | 66.7% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Germany | 0.20 | 2021 | 0.10 | 50.0% | 1.00× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Spain | 3.09 | 2021 | 1.54 | 49.8% | 5.13× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Lithuania | 2.75 | 2021 | 1.17 | 42.5% | 19.50× | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Poland | 1.90 | 2020 | 0.70 | 36.8% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
| Luxembourg | 0.42 | 2020 | 0.04 | 9.5% | — | Eurostat; Axis calc. |
Retention = 2024 rate ÷ highest annual rate 2020–2024 × 100. “—” = no 2019 value reported (France reported 0.00 in 2019, so no multiple is computed).
Three post-pandemic patterns
Kept and still climbing. Hungary’s rate went from 0.39 per inhabitant in 2020 to 1.34 in 2024, a 3.44× increase. Czechia rebounded 58.8% in a single year, from 0.68 in 2023 to 1.08 in 2024.
Came down from a very high peak. Spain reached 3.09 teleconsultations per inhabitant in 2021 — the highest single-year rate in the dataset — and halved to 1.54 by 2024. Lithuania followed the same arc from 2.75 to 1.17. Both still sit far above their 2019 levels: Spain at 5.13 times, Lithuania at 19.50 times.
Pre-pandemic leader, slowly declining. Denmark is the case the pandemic framing misses. It already recorded 2.04 teleconsultations per inhabitant in 2019, before COVID-19, and its rate has fallen every year since, to 1.56 in 2024 — 23.5% below 2019. Denmark’s telehealth was embedded before the emergency; its trend is a separate story from the pandemic spike.
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: When you read “telehealth use has fallen since 2021”, ask two things: fallen from what, and to what. Spain losing half its peak still leaves it delivering five times its 2019 remote volume. Luxembourg losing 90.5% of a small peak leaves it near zero. Those are different outcomes wearing the same headline.
Do Patients and Official Consultation Counts Agree?
A second Eurostat lens comes from households rather than health systems. The EU survey on ICT usage asks individuals aged 16–74 whether, in the last three months, they used “other health services via a website or app instead of having to go to the hospital or visit a doctor” (indicator I_IUOHC in Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i). Across the EU in 2024, 20.81% said yes.
Share of people using online health services instead of a visit, 2024
| Country | Individuals 16–74 using online health services instead of a visit | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Norway | 63.81% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Finland | 54.65% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Denmark | 47.29% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Netherlands | 42.64% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Spain | 38.06% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Sweden | 32.03% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Italy | 29.31% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Belgium | 28.75% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Portugal | 27.48% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Estonia | 26.32% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Greece | 24.61% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Hungary | 23.08% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Lithuania | 22.53% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Ireland | 20.85% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| EU27 | 20.81% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Latvia | 17.00% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Luxembourg | 16.40% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Slovakia | 15.59% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Slovenia | 14.23% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Poland | 13.84% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Malta | 13.38% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| France | 11.87% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Czechia | 11.31% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Germany | 11.10% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Austria | 7.27% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Cyprus | 6.60% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Bulgaria | 6.59% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
| Romania | 3.85% | Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i |
This lens covers Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria, which the consultation data does not.
Where the two lenses diverge
Across the 18 countries that appear in both datasets, Axis Intelligence Research finds a Pearson correlation of 0.58 between the remote share of doctor consultations and the share of people using online health services instead of a visit. The lenses point the same way — Germany, France and Romania sit near the bottom of both — but not in lockstep.
Norway is the sharpest divergence: it leads the patient survey at 63.81% while synchronous teleconsultations make up 14.9% of its doctor consultations. The gap is consistent with the definitions. The household question includes any online health service used instead of a visit, while Eurostat’s teleconsultation count requires direct, synchronous contact with a doctor. Estonia runs the other way: 26.32% on the household measure, but the highest remote share of doctor consultations in Europe.
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: These two indicators should never be averaged into one “adoption rate” — one counts consultations delivered by doctors, the other counts people who used any online health service. Kept side by side, they are more useful than either alone: a high survey figure with a low consultation share suggests digital care running through channels other than real-time doctor contact, and that is exactly the kind of structural difference a buyer, a regulator or a researcher needs to see before comparing countries.
How Does Telehealth Adoption Compare Outside Europe?
No source publishes a remote share of doctor consultations for the United States, Canada, Australia, China, India or Brazil on Eurostat’s definition. The national figures below are the strongest primary measures each country publishes, and each measures something different — physicians, patients, internet users or facilities. Axis Intelligence Research reports them side by side and does not merge them into the RCEI™.
| Country | Headline measure | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Office-based physicians using telemedicine | 80.0% | 2024 | CDC NCHS, Health E-Stat 120 |
| United States | Adults who used telemedicine in past 12 months | 30.1% | 2022 | CDC NCHS, NHSR 205 |
| Canada | Health care users with any virtual appointment | 42.5% (Axis calc.) | Jul–Aug 2023 | Statistics Canada, Canadian Social Survey |
| Australia | People 15+ with a telehealth consultation in past 12 months | 22.5% | 2024–25 | Australian Bureau of Statistics |
| England | GP appointments delivered face to face | 60.1% | July 2026 | NHS England Digital |
| China | Online medical service users | 418 million (37.7% of internet users) | Dec 2024 | CNNIC, 55th Statistical Report |
| India | eSanjeevani cumulative consultations | over 163 million | through Sep 2023 | Oxford Open Digital Health (peer-reviewed) |
| Brazil | Health establishments offering teleconsultation | 23% | 2024 | Cetic.br, TIC Saúde 2024 |
United States
In 2024, 80.0% of office-based physicians used telemedicine, down from 86.5% in 2021, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, which counts audio-only, audio-with-video and web videoconference visits. The decline is steepest among surgical specialists (74.8% to 60.1%); primary care physicians moved from 91.4% to 86.2%, and medical specialists from 87.2% to 83.2%.
On the patient side, the most recent NCHS adult estimate is older: 30.1% of U.S. adults used telemedicine in the past 12 months in 2022, down from 37.0% in 2021, with use at 34.2% in large central metro areas and 19.6% in the most rural counties (NCHS, National Health Statistics Report 205). Claims-based U.S. utilization, Medicare telehealth policy and payer-level detail are covered in our US telehealth statistics, which owns those figures.
Canada
In the 2023 Canadian Social Survey, 37.2% of health care users had both in-person and virtual appointments and 5.3% had virtual appointments only, per Statistics Canada’s Health Reports. Axis Intelligence Research sums these to 42.5% of health care users with at least one virtual appointment. Virtual-only use ranged from 13.2% in Newfoundland and Labrador to 2.1% in Saskatchewan, and 8.9% of users declined a virtual appointment (Statistics Canada, StatsCAN Plus).
Australia
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Patient Experiences 2024–25 survey (25,368 fully responding persons aged 15 and over) found 22.5% of people had at least one telehealth consultation in the previous 12 months, down from a peak of 30.8% in 2021–22. GP telehealth reached 18.5% of people and specialist telehealth 4.0%. Use was 31.2% among people with a long-term health condition versus 13.3% without, and peaked among women aged 25–34 at 33.4%.
England
General practice in England recorded 34.9 million appointments in July 2026, and 60.1% were carried out face to face, according to NHS England Digital’s Appointments in General Practice, July 2026. The remaining 39.9% covers telephone, video/online, home visits and appointments with unknown mode, so it is an upper bound on remote GP care rather than a remote share.
China
China had 418 million online medical service users in December 2024 — 37.7% of its 1,108 million internet users — according to the China Internet Network Information Center’s 55th Statistical Report. The user base grew by 3.72 million in the year, while its share of internet users edged down from 37.9%.
India
India’s national telemedicine service, eSanjeevani, delivered over 163 million consultations across all 28 states and 8 union territories through September 2023, with the assisted health-and-wellness-centre model accounting for more than 93% of use, per a peer-reviewed study in Oxford Open Digital Health. Women’s share of direct-to-patient OPD consultations rose to 70.1% in 2023. A later ministerial written reply in the Rajya Sabha, as reported by Digital Health News, put the cumulative total at more than 430 million (43 crore) as of November 23, 2025.
Brazil
In the Cetic.br TIC Saúde 2024 survey, 23% of Brazilian health establishments offered teleconsultation to patients, 30% offered clinician-to-clinician teleconsultoria and 23% telediagnosis. Public establishments lead on teleconsultoria (38% vs 23% private) and telemonitoring (24% vs 9%).
Jennifer Miller, Digital Health: The temptation with this table is to rank it. Don’t. An 80% physician-use rate in the U.S. and a 35.6% consultation share in Estonia measure different things: the first says most doctors have done telemedicine; the second says how much of care is telemedicine. Only the consultation share tells you how embedded remote care is — and outside Europe, that number is simply not published yet.
Methodology
Collection. Axis Intelligence Research retrieved every figure on September 22, 2026 from the publisher’s own dataset, report or release. European consultation data come from the Eurostat API for dataset hlth_hc_phys2 (in-person consultations, teleconsultations and total consultations of medical doctors, number per inhabitant; the CSV carries 2019–2024). Population denominators come from Eurostat tps00001 (population on January 1, 2024). Patient-side data come from Eurostat isoc_ci_ac_i, indicator I_IUOHC, 2024. National figures outside Europe come from CDC NCHS, Statistics Canada, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, NHS England Digital, CNNIC, Cetic.br and a peer-reviewed study of eSanjeevani.
Integrity check. For all 20 countries, in-person plus teleconsultations equals Eurostat’s reported total to the second decimal, except Finland (a 0.02 rounding difference in the source). Axis-computed shares reproduce Eurostat’s published rounded figures for Estonia, Portugal and Sweden.
Formulas.
- Remote share = teleconsultations per inhabitant ÷ total consultations per inhabitant × 100.
- Estimated teleconsultations = teleconsultations per inhabitant × population on January 1, 2024.
- Weighted remote share (20 countries) = Σ estimated teleconsultations ÷ Σ estimated total consultations × 100.
- Peak retention = 2024 rate ÷ highest annual rate 2020–2024 × 100.
- Counterfactual gap = (reference rate − country rate) × country population.
- RCEI™ = 0.45 × S + 0.30 × V + 0.25 × R, where S = remote share ÷ 35.64 × 100, V = teleconsultations per inhabitant ÷ 2.06 × 100, and R = peak retention. Weights favor share (how much of care is remote) over volume, with retention as the durability test.
Arithmetic verification. Every Axis-calculated figure was computed twice in Python — once in floating point, once with exact rational arithmetic (fractions.Fraction) — and the two passes matched before any figure entered the text.
Scope. Eurostat’s teleconsultation count covers synchronous doctor–patient contact; asynchronous messaging, remote monitoring and teleconsultations with other health professionals fall outside it. Countries collect consultation data from administrative sources that differ in coverage, so small differences between neighbouring countries should not be over-read. Population-based counts use January 1 population as the multiplier, a close but not exact match to the population base Eurostat uses for per-inhabitant rates. Non-European figures are not on the same definition and are not ranked against Europe. Eurostat revises back data; this edition reflects values published at retrieval.
About This Dataset
Title: Telehealth Adoption by Country 2026 — Axis Intelligence Research Dataset
File: telehealth-adoption-by-country.csv — 498 rows, 15 columns (record_id, metric, value, unit, as_of_date, geography, segment, source_org, source_document, source_url, retrieved_date, is_primary, axis_calculated, method_note, license)
Coverage: 42 geography values (countries, provinces and aggregates); observations dated 2019–2026; teleconsultations, in-person and total doctor consultations for 21 European countries; RCEI™ components and scores for 18 countries; patient-side online health service use for 27 countries plus the EU27; national telehealth measures for the United States, Canada, Australia, England, China, India and Brazil.
Mirrors: Hugging Face, Kaggle and GitHub (Axis Intelligence Research organization pages).
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Reuse, republish and adapt with attribution to Axis Intelligence Research and a link to this page.
Corrections: [email protected] — corrections are published with a dated note on this page.
Related Axis Intelligence Research datasets: digital health statistics for market and funding data, connected health statistics for wearable and remote-monitoring data flows, AI in healthcare statistics for clinical AI adoption, and FDA AI medical device statistics for the regulatory pipeline. The full catalog lives on the Axis Intelligence statistics hub.
How to Cite This Page
Frequently Asked Questions
Which country has the highest share of doctor consultations done by telehealth?
Estonia. In 2024, 35.6% of doctor consultations in Estonia were teleconsultations — about one in every 2.8 — according to Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation on Eurostat data. Portugal (26.1%) and Sweden (25.6%) rank second and third.
Does a phone call with my doctor count as a teleconsultation in official statistics?
In Eurostat’s consultation data, yes. Eurostat counts “interactive telemedicine which involves direct and synchronous communication between providers and patients”, which covers real-time phone and video consultations. Asynchronous messages, e-prescription requests and remote monitoring readings are not counted as teleconsultations.
How many teleconsultations take place in Europe each year?
Axis Intelligence Research estimates about 216 million doctor teleconsultations in 2024 across the 20 European countries that report the data to Eurostat, 8.4% of all doctor consultations. Spain accounts for 74.87 million of them. Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Ireland do not report the series, so the continental total is higher.
Why is Germany’s telehealth adoption so low in the data?
Germany recorded 0.10 teleconsultations per inhabitant in 2024 against 9.80 total doctor consultations — a remote share of 1.0%, the third-lowest of 20 countries. The rate has stayed between 0.10 and 0.20 every year since 2019. At Spain’s per-capita rate, Axis Intelligence Research estimates Germany would log about 120 million more teleconsultations a year.
Is telehealth use falling now that the pandemic is over?
In most European countries it is below its 2020–2021 peak but well above 2019. Of 18 countries with a full series, 12 kept at least 70% of their peak rate in 2024. Hungary is at its high; Spain kept 49.8% of its peak but still runs at 5.13 times its 2019 level.
What is the Remote Consultation Embedding Index (RCEI™)?
The RCEI™ is a 0–100 score from Axis Intelligence Research measuring how firmly remote consultation is built into a country’s doctor care. It weights remote share of consultations (45%), teleconsultations per inhabitant (30%) and retention of the 2020–2024 peak (25%), all from Eurostat. Estonia leads the baseline reading at 97.2.
How does the United States compare with Europe on telehealth?
They are measured differently, so a direct ranking is not possible. The CDC reports that 80.0% of U.S. office-based physicians used telemedicine in 2024 and that 30.1% of adults used it in 2022. No U.S. agency publishes the share of all doctor consultations delivered remotely, which is the measure Europe’s ranking uses.
What share of Australians and Canadians use telehealth?
In Australia, 22.5% of people aged 15 and over had a telehealth consultation in 2024–25, down from 30.8% in 2021–22 (ABS). In Canada, 42.5% of health care users had at least one virtual appointment in 2023, combining 37.2% who used both virtual and in-person care and 5.3% who used virtual care only (Statistics Canada).
Can I reuse this data in a report, article or model?
Yes. The dataset and the RCEI™ are published under CC BY 4.0. Attribute “Axis Intelligence Research” and link to axis-intelligence.com/telehealth-adoption-by-country/. Every row in the CSV carries its original source URL and retrieval date, so figures can be traced back to Eurostat or the national agency.