Digital Health
The DHAGE 2024 High-Level Meeting, themed ‘Harnessing Digital Health: Analysing Economic Impact in Healthcare Systems’, brought together high-level policymakers and international experts to explore the profound economic impacts of integrating digital health solutions into healthcare systems.
The discussions were focused on financial frameworks, funding models, and assessing the overall impact of digital health on healthcare systems. Experts’ insights were based on experiences from France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, and Sweden, highlighting the strategies and challenges in digital transformation.
The meeting provided actionable policy insights and recommendations to foster advancements in digital health. Participants underscored the importance of effective funding mechanisms and comprehensive evaluations to support sustainable digital health implementations. It was noted that investments must be economically beneficial and advance public health goals. This holistic approach is expected to promote a more inclusive and effective healthcare system by balancing financial gains with societal benefits.
The DHAGE 2024 High-Level Meeting provided eight recommendations for advancing digital health in Europe:
Recommendation 1. Government funding is important as an incentive for early adoption of innovative applications that help empower the public and support providers.
Recommendation 2. National governments should use efficient public procurement policies to support scaling, developing and fostering the use of interoperable solutions.
Recommendation 3. The European Commission should actively support Member States in making effective use of European funds for reforming health systems, particularly in the implementation of the European Health Data Space to provide access to quality data for primary and secondary use.
Recommendation 4. The EU should promote the creation of a true European internal market for digital and data solutions in healthcare, grounded in EU regulations, standards and skilled professionals, to shape the digital future of public health across the EU and to bring about competitive, globally successful solutions.
Recommendation 5. National governments and international organisations should design holistic policies that consider different funding options for the range of digital health solutions and have a long-term investment perspective.
Recommendation 6. National governments and the European Commission should agree on a core set of indicators at the European level to measure the impact of digital health projects on health and healthcare, and promote their use in all EU-funded projects.
Recommendation 7. The European Commission and national governments should facilitate the pooling of digital health expertise to learn from and to accelerate decision-making by identifying best-in-class solutions, practices, and successfully implemented use cases.
Recommendation 8. National Governments should develop and promote Health System Performance Assessment (HSPA) with attention to digitalisation in healthcare, and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) of digital solutions to measure adoption, effectiveness, and efficiency of solutions.
The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and participants of the DHAGE meeting, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the participating countries, organizations, or HIMSS or its affiliates.