On 25th October 2018, we were invited as speaker in the “Digital Health for all” workshop, organised by the Regional Ministry of Health of Andalusia (Andalusia Reference Site) in collaboration with the Andalusian Delegation in Brussels, in the context of the European Commission (EC) Communication on Digital Transformation of Health and Care in the Digital Single Market published last April 2018.
The workshop included participants from public institutions, academia, industry partners, and civil society. They all contributed in the discussion on what are the benefits and the drawbacks of the EC Communication and how can stakeholders from different backgrounds work together to make Digital Health in Europe a reality.
Digital Health has a lot of benefits for patients. To start with, allowing access to healthcare professionals to patients’ health electronic records enables them to picture patients’ health history and, therefore, help them to make timely and accurate diagnosis and better care decisions, creating more confidence and collaboration between patients and healthcare professionals. The collection of patients’ data also allows the emergency teams to make the best decisions in emergency situations. Also, digital health permits patients and the healthcare community to easily manage chronic diseases by tracking and monitoring the disease on a daily basis. As a consequence, the above contributes to healthcare costs reduction, more access in its broad sense and better health outcomes.
Still, there is an open debate on how to find the right balance between ensuring patients’ data confidentiality and how to make it available for public health, healthcare and research purposes, while ensuring an ethical and confidential use of it.
To discover more on the “Digital Health for all” it’s here!
To learn more on the EC Communication on Digital Transformation of Health and Care in the Digital Single Market, click here.