Quality of life for Europeans but especially for older EU citizens is determined in large part by how and if their daily lives support independent living, social connectivity, and enable meaningful social participation.
The draft version of the “Blueprint on Digital Transformation of Health and Care for the Aging Society” will be highlighted at the EHTEL Summit www.ehtel.eu organized by the European Union (EU) on December 6-7, 2016 to be held in Brussels.
The draft “Blueprint” points out that there is a lack of sustainable models for health and care delivery in the EU. Transforming healthcare in Europe is just at the beginning and there is an important need for digital health technologies along with appropriate standards and regulations to support the transformation.
In addition, one of the biggest issues in Europe is the lack of care coordination between primary care, communities, and hospitals. To achieve better care coordination, care delivery mechanisms will have to be transformed by innovative technologies.
Europe is experiencing a shift from acute, hospital-based care to early prevention, to population management, and to community and home-based care. In order to have better coordination, there needs to be local and regional planning and more healthcare provided in schools, workplaces, and public spaces.
The draft document points out that another important challenge is to collate the vast array of medical and non-medical data along with paper-based records, and transform them into a usable format combining structured and unstructured data.
Once the data is digitized, it needs to be shared. This will happen if the data is supported by HIEs, EHRs, population health management, mobile health, and analytics. If this does not occur, experts fear that achieving integrated care is bound to be difficult, if not impossible.
Worldwide, data analytics, robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, gamification, cloud, smart homes, internet of things , 3D printing and wearable technologies are all opening new windows to the data economy.
The brief mentions that data is becoming the new oil of the digital economy. The willingness of providers to share data in exchange for the use of clinical information may open up new business opportunities for data driven companies.
Go to www.ehtel.eu to view the draft version of the Blueprint document.