That health is an area undergoing an abrupt transformation is evident. A query made by La Vanguardia to the fashionable artificial intelligence (AI), the ChatGPT conversational chat, confirms that the future of health is digital and that Barcelona has a say in it.
The question: can Barcelona be a global digital health hub, as the Barcelona Health Hub (BHH) association, based in old Sant Pau, intends to do?
The response of the chatbot created by Open AI is, in summary, the following: “It is possible that Barcelona could become a city of global reference in matters of digital health. It already has a wide presence in the field of technology and innovation. In addition, it has a large number of research institutions and a strong community of innovative startups. To achieve this, Barcelona could consider promoting collaboration between companies, universities and other institutions. You could also consider creating a favorable ecosystem for the growth of startups and innovative companies in digital health, and establishing alliances with other cities.”
Some of these concepts are used by the promoters of the Barcelona hub, so it is likely that the ChatGPT algorithm has collected data released by this association.
The founding partners of BHH Cristian Pascual, Óscar García-Esquirol and Luis Badrinas explain that their platform, born in 2019 to accelerate the digital transformation in health and to facilitate technology transfer, already has 400 partners, including large corporations, startups, institutions (such as universities and hospitals) and investors.
The health innovation sector is resisting the withdrawal of venture capital better than the whole of the new economy. For this and other reasons, the context – consider those responsible for BHH – is ideal to aspire to be the leading digital health hub in Europe.
A key element in achieving this will be the celebration in Barcelona, in May 2023, of the Health Revolution Congress, a meeting that will host the Llotja and which aims to bring together all the local and international actors in digital health.
A side effect of the expansion of the Barcelona Health Hub is that it has breathed more life into the historic site of Sant Pau. To the three pavilions that it already occupies, it will soon add another, that of Montserrat. His presence, in fact, reaffirms the site's commitment to health, sustainability, education and culture.
A few days apart, the Digital Health World Congress will be held in London, also in the spring of 2023. Although the organizers of the Barcelona event stress that the British conference is highly theoretical and focused on corporations, while the one in Barcelona will serve to speed up technology transfer to patients, the truth is that competition in the sector is fierce.
ChatGPT also believes that the Barcelona commitment will have to overcome some challenges, such as the scarcity of resources, the difficulty in attracting and retaining talent or certain regulatory rigidities, in addition to this competition that "will pit Barcelona against other cities and regions that are also trying the same thing". .
But he also points out a delicate issue: he considers that good technological practices will have to be widely disseminated, “especially if there is resistance or mistrust on the part of health professionals or the population in general”. It is not lost on this invisible oracle that many people associate these technological achievements with the decision of some governments to impose telematic consultation to save on doctors.
The BHH is committed to adding, rather than substituting: to provide doctors with a technology that ends up favoring the patient. But the fact that the AI itself assumes that there are people who do not see it so clearly is disturbing. Deep down, he knows that we know that his ultimate goal is to replace. replace us
