The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic made it possible to verify the importance of the transformation process towards digitization, especially in areas such as health. The incorporation of the latest technology and digital innovation have been revealed as essential tools to boost health care, create a national data space and facilitate its primary and secondary use to effectively respond to multiple challenges such as the one posed by the coronavirus.
The Digital Health Strategy of the National Health System offers, under the protection of the Next Generation funds of the European Union, a unique opportunity to develop a change in the model that will have an evident positive impact. This implies facing a series of challenges to implement the necessary technological, organizational and cultural change and make all the expectations generated a reality.
For this, it is necessary to have public-private collaboration between organizations and health professionals and companies in the field of health and technology that are willing to provide innovative proposals. An example of this is Boehringer Ingelheim, whose mission to add value through innovation goes beyond the development of therapeutic options to cover unmet medical needs. The German company with Spanish headquarters in Sant Cugat del Vallès focuses its vision on contributing to the transformation of the health system to turn digital health challenges into solutions that provide a better quality of life for patients and guarantee the sustainability of the entire system. .
To reflect on and share experiences on these and other issues, this pharmaceutical company has organized an event, within the framework of Four Years From Now – Mobile World Congress (4YFN – MWC), scheduled for Wednesday, March 1, which will feature the presence of key people from Boehringer Ingelheim, managers of the areas of digital innovation in the health sector and representatives of various start-ups from the world of health. The tables will be moderated by Dr. Julio Mayol, director of the Innovation Unit of the San Carlos Health Research Institute (idSSC) and patron of the San Carlos Biomedical Research Foundation, where he also serves as vice president.
As Guillem Bruch, new director of Human Pharma Regions Medicine at Boehringer Ingelheim Global, explains, “this congress gives us the opportunity to meet with the ecosystem of start-ups, technology developers and companies specialized in digital health, agents involved and those responsible for innovation of hospitals, regulatory bodies and public health agencies and jointly explore those options that allow people’s lives to be transformed, with technology within the reach of patients”.
The first round table will focus much of its attention on the advantages of the data lake application. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Medicines Regulatory Network created a coordination centre, called the Data Analysis and Real World Interrogation Network (DARWIN EU)®, to provide reliable evidence on the use, safety and efficacy of medicines, including vaccines, from health databases.
Now, digital health is taking a step forward in Spain, with the creation of a huge health data lake; that is to say, from a raw and virtual data storage repository, which, processed with Big Data tools, allows valid data to be obtained almost immediately to make the best health decisions.
Undoubtedly, Artificial Intelligence is an essential ally to improve diagnoses and treatments, anticipate possible scenarios with intelligent alerts, optimize resources and carry out personalized medicine. Big Data techniques provide, as Bruch explains, “a layer of intelligence that is of special relevance in the application of preventive models that help to anticipate health needs”.
Likewise, robotics or the Internet of Things (IoT) have led to the increasingly frequent use of digital devices in hospitals and clinics. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), such as electronic devices used for sports, are already essential for prevention and treatment strategies in the health field. Digitization will very soon mean a transformation in the way of working in the sector, which will imply a series of training needs and the creation of new professional profiles of data scientists, who are capable of combining Big Data analysis with knowledge of the healthcare world.
The second round table will address the way in which the irruption of all these technologies has revolutionized the traditional concept of patient care. To this end, the differences in the transfer of health innovation in Europe and the United States will be studied, with special attention to the HTA (Health Technology Assessment) regulatory supervision and evaluation paradigms, as well as the European initiatives to introduce digital health into the sanitary system.
The vision of the health system from the perspective of a start-up will also be offered and the role of Pharma companies as fundamental partners in the digital transformation will be analyzed, in aspects such as the development of digital therapies (DTx), which offer interventions to patients from clinically tested software to treat, manage, and prevent a broad spectrum of diseases and disorders.
On the other hand, from the pharmaceutical company it is expected to generate an interesting debate on how necessary is the involvement of all the agents involved for the generation of the transfer of digital technologies in innovative solutions, to improve the lives of patients. Along these lines, Boehringer Ingelheim is developing CT-155, a DTx, created and marketed with Click Therapeutics and BI, which uses cognitive and neurobehavioral mechanisms to help patients with schizophrenia modify their behavior and induce positive neural changes. And he will also talk about Airology, a collaboration between Bayoomed/Bayoonet and BI for the creation of digital behavior change intervention software that helps patients with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) to self-manage the adoption of clinically recommended attitudes to reduce the dyspnea.
Digital health is already a tangible reality that will significantly influence healthcare worldwide. The technology has the potential to change the current paradigm of treatments, as recognized by regulatory authorities. Initiatives such as that of Boehringer Ingelheim are a great opportunity to reflect on the new opportunities that this paradigm shift offers to generate real solutions that have a positive and sustainable impact on the health system.
