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The speakers emphasised that patients, professionals and managers must be taken into account in the digitisation of healthcare.
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The session featured speakers from Accenture, Dedalus Iberia, GMV, Roche, Telefónica, Siemens and Philips Iberia.
The summer course of the University of Málaga, led by Málaga TechPark and Fguma, ‘Salud digital. Retos y oportunidades’ has had an intense first day in which the challenges, solutions and technologies that can help in the management of health have been put on the table.
The day began with a welcome from the director of Málaga TechPark, Felipe Romera, who is the director of this course. “We have never organised a course like this, both in terms of quantity and quality of speakers,” said Romera.
Antonio María Lara López, from the General Foundation of the University of Málaga (Fguma), said that “it is a magnificent programme, which includes Artificial Intelligence”. “I would like to thank the team of the Foundation, the UMA and the students, without whom the courses would not exist,” he said.
Javier López, Vice-Rector for Business, Digital Transformation and Territory at the University of Málaga, highlighted the university’s potential to advance the potential of this area. “Digital health has become essential at a time when there is a large population in cities and a depopulation of the interior, and to continue with a large health coverage requires the development and implementation of digital health tools. It is a very interesting field and there is a lot of work to be done,” he said.
Antonio Urda, President of the Social Council of the University of Málaga and co-director of the summer course, stressed the importance of holding summer courses on digital health. He also stressed that it is no coincidence that the course is being held at Rayo Verde, an example of collaboration between the university, the park and the business world. “The courses have to serve as a critical turning point to see what circumstances we find ourselves in, what we have done wrong, what our objective is in order to try to find the right path for the rest of the year,” said Urda. “I encourage you to participate, generate criticism and ideas, because from all of them we will come out much richer”.
Miguel Ángel Guzmán, Manager of the Andalusian Health Service, assured that “we are too late to realise what we are going to do. We are in time to do it without making the same mistakes”.
“One of the places in Spain and Europe where technological innovation is moving most in this sector is here. I don’t like the term ‘digital health’, I prefer ‘digital health management’ and we have to know how to transmit what we do to the public. Caring for the person comes first, but is it incompatible with applying all the technology and help that we can and that our knowledge allows? Not at all,” stressed Guzmán. “One health, digital transformation and humanisation are the basic pillars of this process,” he said.
The speakers
The inauguration was followed by the block ‘Disrupción Digital y salud. No viene, está aquí’, in which Toni de la Prieta, Accenture Technology Lead and Vice President Artificial Intelligence at the Ricardo Valle Institute (Innova IRV), presented the paper ‘The evolution of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare’.
“Democratisation of health. This is what Artificial Intelligence is all about, how we make people have easy access to health and the patient demands that access is multichannel, that it is results-oriented: curing or mitigating the person’s ailment and let’s not forget that this is about living experiences, because it returns in my health and in something positive,” said de la Prieta.
“Humanising health is the goal and there is an important point: the benefits we get from using AI. We are not at the moment of digitisation, but of applying advanced analytics, Big Data and the genome, of analysing and that this helps us,” he said.
This was followed by the round table ‘Towards an open and accessible healthcare ecosystem’, presented by Manuel Enciso, Director of the School of Computer Engineering at the University of Málaga. Marisa Felipe, General Manager, Dedalus Iberia, spoke on ‘Salud digital con propósito: La tecnología al servicio de la continuidad y calidad asistencial’; and Carlos Royo, Director de Estrategia en Salud, GMV with ‘Inteligencia Artificial y nuevos modelos de datos en salud’.
Marisa Felipe stated that “digital health is not just about introducing technology, but about seeing the challenges of the present and tackling them in a new way. We need to give patients a more active role, give them tools and not just think about patient follow-up, but allow them to collaborate”. “Patients must be trained to make good use of technology,” he said.
For his part, Carlos Royo, said that “we are in the prehistory of what is to come, the change in the ways of what we do is fundamental”. “Offering excellent quality solutions so that the patient feels cared for is the key,” he said, and went on to say that “artificial intelligence has to be based on homogeneous data”. “There are needs and problems to be solved and companies like Marisa’s and mine are looking for solutions,” he added.
The next speaker, Thomas Metcalfe, Roche’s Personalized Healthcare Center of Excellence, gave a talk entitled “Our vision about personalised healthcare”. “We need to transform healthcare and make it more efficient and sustainable,” said Metcalfe, who presented some of the digital solutions for healthcare.
Eva Aurin, Manager of e-Health.Telefónica gave a talk entitled ‘e-Health: Hacia un sector sostenible’ telemedicine service for monitoring chronic patients. “We have to focus on three main actors: patients, professionals and managers,” he said. “We must have the patient well monitored so that they can go home as soon as possible and e-Health makes this possible,” she explained, stressing the reduction in costs involved in its use. Eva Aurin also emphasised humanisation.
The next speaker was Ignacio Arnott González-Tova, Strategic Account Manager, Siemens Healthineers, with the presentation ‘El papel de la industria tecnológica en la digitalización de la Sanidad’. “Innovation and advances should not only be thought of as ‘it’s time to digitise or innovate’ and do so; we must bear in mind the needs of patients and professionals,” he said.
The last speaker was Ignacio Lopez, Government & Public Affairs Director, Philips Iberia, who spoke about the ‘Integration of systems and devices. A commitment to connectivity’. “When we talk about standards in medical devices, there is still a lot to do,” he said, stressing that it is very important that “we all speak the same language, although many things are being done in this regard.
The course will continue tomorrow with the following programme.