On the 23rd and 24th of November 2021 the Digital Health Society and ECHAlliance held the 3rd DHS Summit virtually with over 780 registrations from 68 Countries demonstrating that digital health is truly a global market.
2 days programme
Over 780 registers
68 Countries
22 Sessions
48 international speakers
9 Partners
20 virtual exhibitors
Australia, Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ghana, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Israel, India, Iceland, Japan, Jordan, KSA, Kosovo, Kenya, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Malta, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia, Namibia, Nigeria, Niue, Portugal, Poland, Peru, Pakistan, Romania, Republic of South Africa, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Sierra Leone, Serbia, Seychelles, Tunisia, Tanzania, Taiwan, Turkey, United States.
Highlights included:
DAY 1
The Digital Health Society’s Chair, Bleddyn Rees summarised the 1st day of the Summit 2021 with these 10 takeaways:
1. Must not waste the digital game changer created by the Pandemic. Pandemic biggest wake up call for digital health. A Crisis drives innovation. Time for big actions says the eHealth Network
2. Substantial consensus amongst Europe’s leading health NGOs on what to do so great steer for the European Commission and the European Health Data Space.
3. But must not leave anyone behind – digital must reduce exclusion from services not increase it
4. Must avoid “Digital Hesitancy” says EPF – learn from vaccines hesitancy so major communications plan for all citizens explaining clearly the benefits of health data, the security protections and transparency in all languages and variety of communication tools (e.g. town hall meetings, paper not just on line)
5. Global perspectives from the Global Health Connector included from India the scale of digital – 207million downloads of the COVID App containing details of 1,000million vaccinations! In many developing countries the choice is no healthcare or digital healthcare
6. We need Human and Political Interoperability, says Professor Rajendra Pratap Gupta!
7. We underestimate the voice and importance of Citizens, said speakers from both the Irish and French Ministry of Health.
8. Opportunities for EU Presidency to create longer term alignment of digital health goals beyond the 18 month duration of the Trio of Presidencies.
9. Ireland’s healthcare drives behind “shift left stay left” (in effect treat nearer the home and focus on prevention and keeping people well)
10. Greater Collaboration is key between Member States, between European Commission & Member States, between healthcare professionals and patients, between EU NGOs and all countries across the globe. Healthcare knows no borders!
DAY 2
ECHAlliance’s Innovation Director, Karolina Mackiewicz hosted the Day 2 of the Summit, under the topic “Connecting innovation, knowledge and our communities”, and she has summarised the day with these 4 takeaways:
1. DATA – “It’s a key resource and a base of all our developments”. We need to exploit the different opportunities of the data, so that it’s not used only for diagnostics and treatment but also for predictive analysis.
2. USER-PERSPECTIVE – “To create meaningful digital experience and sustainably scale health innovations, we need to address the values of the people and connect the digital solutions with the daily context of the user”.
3. SKILLS – Involving end-users requires skills. Healthcare professionals, patients and the society as a whole need to upskill and reskill in order to benefit from the digital transformation. During the pandemic, the digital solutions were deployed quickly, the local and national authorities acted fast but some people, eg older citizens, were not able to use them. We need to act on that so that we avoid the “digital dropouts”.
4. ECOSYSTEMS – We need ecosystem-based collaboration because “nobody has a monopoly on innovations and good ideas”. It’s great that “we are more collaborative than ever” and eager to connect for sharing and learning.
Also, she said “we need to connect the policy and company level and the The Digital Health Society is a perfect platform for that”.
Learn more about the DHS Summit21 here
