In this session, five EHTEL members looked both backwards and forwards in time on digital health and its impacts. Their inputs were stimulated by the need to answer several questions about impacts and lessons learned. They described their visions of the digital transformation of healthcare. They shared their experiences with deployment journeys. All provided the Symposium attendees with a list of challenges. The session ended with insights into the experiences of a collaboration platform – EHTEL itself. The recordings capture the presenters' insights, many of them on their own personal/professional experiences and stories/narratives.
- Primary care delivery representative: “What has been the impact of digital health on your daily practice? What lessons to retain for future developments?” by Antoni Peris Grao, CASAP, Spain
- Secondary care delivery representative: “What has been the impact of digital health on clinical processes? What lessons to retain for future developments?” by Maddalena Illario, Federico II University Hospital, Italy
- Health and care system representative: “What has been the transformative effect of digital health on the health and care system so far? What lessons to retain for future developments?” by Beatrice Kluge, gematik, Germany
- Business representative: “Which lessons to retain from the way the market has evolved over the last 10 years?” by Dalibor Frtunik, SORSIX, Northern Macedonia
- Research and innovation representative: “Why is innovation slow to take-up in the field? What should have been researched more to facilitate this take-up?” by Hannes Schlieter, Technical University of Dresden, Germany
- Collaboration platform representative: “Which lessons to retain from a 25-year collaboration platform experience?” by Marc Lange, EHTEL
The session was supported by SORSIX, an Australian/North Macedonian software company, and introduced by Petra Wilson of HealthConnect Partners, UK.
🗣️ Speakers
â–ş Primary care delivery representative: What has been the impact of digital health on your daily practice? What lessons to retain for future developments?
Antoni Peris Grao, CASAP, Spain
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Antoni Peris-Grao, is a specialist in family and community medicine, from Consorci Casteldefels Agents de Salut Primà ria (CASAP), Catalunya. He explored the impact of digital health on primary care daily practice. Drawing on the work of the Catalunyan region, he introduced several success stories and drawbacks from the perspective of three stakeholder groups. The successes have included: electronic health records and interconnectivity (for healthcare professionals); big data, care management, and increased accessibility (for healthcare providers and healthcare authorities); and online appointment scheduling, accessibility, and personal data management (for citizens). He was keen to emphasise the way in which Catalunya’s experiences have facilitated team-work and collaboration. Challenges remain, however. Among them: some workforce reluctance/burdens; conflicts in usefulness; and difficulties with data interpretation.
â–ş Secondary care delivery representative: What has been the impact of digital health on clinical processes? What lessons to retain for future developments?
Maddalena Illario, Federico II University Hospital, Italy
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Maddalena Illario of University Federico II, Italy, focused on secondary care and clinical practices. She started with insights into hospital workforces and the skills and training that they need. Also, “It’s hard to get rid of legacy systems,” she argued. Digital solutions have offered several types of support: improved identification, improved budgeting and purchasing, faster professional-patient communication e.g., through telemedicine apps. She compared two forms of hospital organisation, especially today’s trend towards bringing the benefits of “process organisation” including collaboration between work teams. Among the four lessons learned and future key pending issues for hospitals are: data, interoperability, organisation, and performance. She concluded: “We should make sure we have organisational experts [on board].”
â–ş Health and care system representative: What has been the transformative effect of digital health on the health and care system so far? What lessons to retain for future developments?
Beatrice Kluge, gematik, Germany
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Beatrice Kluge is Head of EU & Innovation Partnerships at gematik, Germany’s national digital medicine agency. Her focus was very much on legal frameworks. She drew on the words of eminent systems engineer, W. Edwards Deming, to introduce her viewpoint: “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Today, Germany is well on its way forward with digital health: it foresees healthy prospects ahead. Core is the Electronic Health Data Space (EHDS). Germany’s legal framework is in transition. At least two legal acts are already in place: the Digital Act and the Health Data Usage Act. In progress are a gematik Act and a Medical Research Act. gematik itself is active in at least two large European initiatives, Xt-EHR, which focus on electronic health records, and TEHDAS2, the second joint action on the EHDS. She concluded that there are “so many things”, to work on together.
â–ş Business representative: Which lessons to retain from the way the market has evolved over the last 10 years?
Dalibor Frtunik, SORSIX, Northern Macedonia
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As the sponsor of this session, Dalibor Frtunik of Australian/North Macedonian technology company, SORSIX emphasised how the market has evolved to respond to consumers’ demand for digital health. Many of his insights drew on SORSIX’s 10-year experiences internationally. Today, the quality of digital solutions is particularly important. Consumers have shown considerable interest in services, communications, and digital literacy. Currently, the challenges related to digital literacy are “evaporating”. To illustrate this point, Dalibor drew on the example from New Zealand of the first person who made an online appointment booking via his smart phone: a 92-year old man. SORSIX is especially monitoring two market trends, market engagement and procurement-in-transition: indeed, “no-one knows what to buy anymore”. His presentation concluded with the insight that people don’t know what the future will bring.
â–ş Research and Innovation representative: Why is innovation slow to take-up in the field? What should have been researched more to facilitate this take-up?
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Hannes Schlieter is Head of Technology University Dresden’s Digital Health Research Group. He outlined a number of research and innovation perspectives. He offered an overview of why innovation in digital health is slow to take off: he focused on three factors – people, objects, and processes. Overall, the current and future challenges include: uncertainty, time to either capture or build evidence, and the time it takes for digital health to come to market. As a researcher, he reflected in terms of the past, “It’s really hard to navigate this ecosystem.”
â–ş Collaboration platform representative: Which lessons to retain from a 25-year collaboration platform experience?
Marc Lange, EHTEL, Belgium
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Marc Lange, EHTEL’s General Secretary, ended the session with insights into the experiences of a collaboration platform – EHTEL itself. Working forwards from EHTEL’s kick-off meeting held September 1999, he outlined the kinds of conversations EHTEL has engaged in with its members over 25 years of activity. Through time, the association has used a learn-trial-error approach. Today, its main focus is on digitally-enabled transformation of health and care systems. Collaborations have been based on the actions of several working groups, task forces, projects, webinars, and many Symposia. Three key lessons learned have been: the combination of top-down/bottom-up approaches; a focus on “What’s in it for me?”; and always “starting with the end in mind”.
The session ended with a general discussion with all the session's presenters. Its look backwards provided a solid basis for the remainder of the Symposium's sessions which then looked forward.
