October 20, 2018
October 20, 2018
Impressions from HIMSS Impact conference 2018
In the middle of October, the international Symposium on Big data in medicine, took place at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam.
The event, organized by HPI and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), revealed some of the key challenges in the Digital Health field but as well provided concrete examples of success cases and best practices of the digital transformation in the healthcare sector.
Presented cases, like Selfapy – an online therapy platform with implemented therapy algorithm basing on patient`s needs, Patient status engine – an AI concept basing on continuous vital sign monitoring or HPI`s Molecular tumor board with possibility of using personalized medicine approaches in decision making process, are the existing proof of Big data having a positive impact on healthcare ecosystem.
Still, there are multiple digital innovators who are confronted with obsolete structures and processes, skepticism and lack of competence of involved parties. Because Big data is perceived as groundbreaking change that will dictate direction of health care evolution, many individual actors such as institutions are not yet ready for embracing the topic. During the round table event, representatives of five different European countries sat down and talked about the digital situation and the corresponding challenges in their country. Everybody agreed that while EU countries may all be at a different level in terms of understanding and integrating digitization and digital data usage in society, their key challenges of the healthcare digitalization are similar. The absence of single system for data integration and unsolved questions regarding data exchange and security are challenges the Digital healthcare is facing all over the Europe. As fortune favours the bold, the digital innovators have to accept a certain risk and adapt to experimental learning until before mentioned open questions will come to acceptable resolution. For now, our eyes are turned to Finnish Innovation Fund`s IHAN project, that started this April. The main objective of IHAN is to create a method for data exchange and to set up European level rules and guidelines for ethical use of data.Every digital innovator hopes the IHAN succeeds and shows us all the path to becoming part of the third healthcare revolution.
