(Finance) – The change to come. If digitization in Italy has already transformed the scenario of various production sectors like finance and mobility, the same cannot be said about health. In the last two decades, healthcare facilities have equipped themselves with very different digital technologies and this has led to an overall fragmented and inhomogeneous approach when it was necessary to standardize technological systems to offer integrated services to citizens.
In all of this the pandemic had two main effects: if on the one hand it has accelerated the transformation towards a more digital and virtual healthcare with the adoption of new models of home care and telemedicine, on the other it has highlighted all the difficulties of the health system which was only partially able to adopt and offer a well-structured technological approach capable of following every aspect of the “patient journey”. The numbers also confirm the complexities present in Italy in terms of investments: according to the research “The digital health market 2018-2024” drawn up by NetConsulting cube, the total value of the sector reaches 3.3 billion euros in 2021 with a + 8% on 2020 and a growth prospect that exceeds 4 billion euros in 2024. Europe is registering important numbers: a research by the international company Graphical Research shows how the European digital health market reached 47 billion euros last year and is preparing to grow by 17% until 2027 where it will reach almost 140 billion euros.
The Italian data they represent only a small part of the European cake: only 7% on 2021 and, if the estimates are confirmed, it will reach 4.6% by 2024. Even if the market trend is growing, the digitalization process of Italian healthcare is still long and complex. A concrete help will come from the funds provided for by the PNRR: as recently illustrated by Minister for Technology Innovation Vittorio Colaoinvestments of approximately 2.5 billion euros in digital health are on the agenda, of which 1.3 for the creation of an integrated data infrastructure and 1 billion for the provision of digital health services.
“We have a unique opportunity to accelerate the digital transformation of the Italian healthcare system and make it evolve thanks to innovative models and tools. But you need to hurry because we have a long way to recover from other nations – he explains Marzio Ghezzi, CEO of the Italian startup Mia-Care -. Thanks to modern-cloud-based technologies and a modular approach we can reconstruct the doctor-patient relationship put to the test in recent yearsoffering innovative digital services for specialists, patients and all operators involved in the Italian healthcare ecosystem “.
The difficulties that Italian healthcare is facing in this digitization process are reflected in the current one situation of the electronic health record established in 2015: about 80% of regions have less than 50% of indexed documents and, as if that were not enough, the loading takes place with unstructured data and different standards, thus preventing interoperability between regional health systems. It doesn’t get better if you analyze the data on the user side: according to theDigital Innovation Observatory in Health of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, only 12% of people have used the electronic health record and 62% have never even heard of it. The same research has highlighted, however, the propensity of doctors and patients to use digital telemedicine channels: if, before the pandemic, the tele-visit was used by 13% of specialist doctors and only by 10% by general practitioners, during the Covid-19 emergency these percentages reached 39% for both categories with an interest in using this service in the future around 65%. The next step on the part of the health system must be to be able to organize an offer as complete as possible because the numbers highlight how this will be an inevitable trend of the future.
To this area of intervention must be added the search for new ways of interacting for patient care, “remote care” and the need to evolve the technological equipment supplied to healthcare personnel. All this can be summed up in a innovative health care model of “connected care”: it is a personalized healthcare, accessible through new technologies and able to provide real-time communication between the patient and a healthcare professional. Telemedicine, remote patient monitoring and the exchange of communications between doctors and their patients are all examples of “connected care”.
“It will be an essential aspect of future healthcare models where the patient and his needs will finally be at the center of digital services made available by health systems – he continues Ghezzi -. With this model, operators will be able to offer personalized assistance and remote medical care through the use of a modular telemedicine platform using wearable devices to collect useful data for treatment and prevention. All this now appears to be a distant future but is just around the corner“.
A technological transformation awaited not only by citizens: according to a research by Deloitte, 92% of health systems are confident that thanks to new technologies it will be possible offer a better patient journey, while for 56% it will be possible to increase the quality of care and clinical care for the patient. One thing is clear: most of the planned digital investments go in the direction of creating a new digital healthcare culture that is patient-friendly.