"Technological development allows empowering the patient, increasing the quality of the healthcare service and ensuring the sustainability of the health and healthcare model", assured the partner and Global Commercial Accesss
The meeting, held last Tuesday at the EY offices in Barcelona, also included the participation of the executive president of Atrys Health and president of the Fundación Mémor, Santiago de Torres; the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of HumanITCare, Núria Pastor; the president of the Business Circle for Attention to People (Ceaps), Cinta Pascual; the CEO of Roche Diagnostics, Adriana Rubio; the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of Laboratorios Ferrer, Ricardo Castrillo, and the Senior Advisor Health Care
Santiago de Torres pointed out that the aging of the population and the increase in life expectancy are causing "an increase in neurodegenerative pathologies, cancer incidence and unwanted loneliness, with a special incidence in the elderly." The formula to face these challenges for the social and health system is to address these problems from a broad perspective, including the person's environment in the solution and relying on digital transformation.
“Technology is going to help a lot in the solution and in the desirable humanization. The opportunity it represents is immense”, highlighted Santiago de Torres, based on his experience at the head of this global company that is committed to telemedicine, medical oncology and state-of-the-art radiotherapy.
"When it's night in Spain, radiologists from Colombia with Spanish degrees make emergency reports and upload them to the cloud in less than 60 minutes to speed up the emergency services of Spanish hospitals," explained the president of Atrys Health, in whose platform, 6.5 million reports are produced per year. The digital transformation of some of the medical diagnosis processes, in combination with the "empowerment of non-medical personnel", can help to "reduce waiting lists" reduce waiting lists and include those people who really They need it," he insisted.
Digitization also facilitates "early risk identification" through diagnostic tests that facilitate medical decision-making in preventive medicine and population management, added Adriana Rubio.
"We have tools on the table that we can use to keep the healthy, healthy," he celebrated. However, he lamented the lack of actionable agreements between the different health actors that do not allow progress to "integrate and harmonize data." Despite this, “technology can overcome what politics prevents”, assured Santiago de Torres.
Núria Pastor, CEO of the start-up based on artificial intelligence for medical monitoring of chronic patients from home, HumanITcCare, stressed that "the health system must go hand in hand with the technology sector". Her signature, she explained, is committed to "connected and predictive health."
In collaboration with Laboratorios Ferrer, HumanITcare has managed to demonstrate "improving the adherence and follow-up of post-infarction patients, as well as in other areas such as chronic and palliative care", he gave as an example. “We have a fabric of start-ups, but the context makes it difficult for them because it is complex and makes it difficult for their technology to be scalable,” lamented Ricardo Castrillo.
Technology is “a complement to clinical decision-making, not a substitute for healthcare professionals”, explained Núria Pastor. If it is properly regulated, taking into account the value it brings, the digitization of the health model can allow "reducing costs and being a solution for the future", predicted the CEO of HumanITCare.
For his part, Jaime del Barrio foresees that “we are moving towards intelligent (artificial intelligence-based) and personalized care” that is based on technological solutions that must comply with “ethical requirements”, in addition to prioritizing cybersecurity.
El Senior Advisor Health Care
Both users of the health system and its professionals rely on technology to improve the health system. "86% of patients are in favor of sharing health data if it benefits disease management and six out of ten health professionals are inclined to incorporate technological solutions," said Ricardo Castrillo.
Due to the pandemic, "administrations have verified the advantages of technology," said the CCO of Laboratorios Ferrer. From the pharmaceutical industry, they work on "both disruptive and incremental innovation". This second provides notable advantages for patients and is not always recognized in the current framework. Both for the incorporation of technology and innovation. However, "it is necessary to make the regulations more flexible" to speed up processes, as happened with vaccines during the pandemic, he claimed to the Castrillo Administration.
The experts participating in the Dialogues meeting at La Vanguardia organized with the collaboration of EY agreed that the pandemic accelerated the digitization of the health sector. Santiago de Torres also highlighted that the health emergency caused by covid-19 has meant progress in terms of "self-care" by the population. And he illustrated it with an example: “Before, people didn't know what oxygen saturation was. Now yes".
"Covid-19 made us aware that the health system can collapse and that there is a lack of professionals to care for it," added the president of Ceaps. Cinta Pascual also appealed to "self-responsibility" and to understand "dependence as one more process of life." “Being the 20th country in the world with the highest life expectancy cannot become the nightmare that it is now, because the system does not have enough agility,” she stated as a spokesperson for Spanish organizations in the dependency sector.
Despite the fact that the pandemic was a catalyst for the digital transformation of the health sector, “we need to continue advancing”, in the opinion of Núria Pastor. "We cannot go back to doing things as before," Ricardo Castrillo also warned.
The "collaboration of all agents in the sector and information based on health results is the key to transforming the health system", concluded Silvia Ondategui to end the meeting.
