Roadmap For Integrating Digital Technologies Into Healthcare

"We hope that this roadmap will be a helpful and relevant guide for global health policymakers."

H.E. Bandar AlKnawy, MD, FRCPC, Lead Author, CEO at Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs, and President,?King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

In medical research it can take an average of 17 years to translate a major discovery to widespread delivery. Conversely, the culture of technology revolves around disruptive innovation and the delivery of new technologies in weeks and months. To translate innovations in digital health into widespread applications, collaboration between health and technology researchers is essential.

To address this, a panel of health experts from around the world published?The Riyadh Declaration on Digital Health ?in 2020. The authors included leaders from King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, The World Health Organization, University of Helsinki, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, The Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre in the UK, CVS Health Corporation in the US, and IBM in the US.

The article highlighted the importance of digital technology and data for resilient healthcare systems and provided 9 recommendations included promoting innovation, cultivating knowledge, and providing training in digital technologies to enable healthcare organizations to collect high-quality data in a timely way, and share the data to create global health intelligence.

An Evidence Based Roadmap

This week the healthcare leaders who developed the Riyadh Declaration on Digital Health published a policy document entitled Digital public health leadership in the global fight for health security in BMJ Global Health. In this 10 page policy document, the authors recommend that digital technology and innovation become the cornerstone of a resilient global healthcare system that places individual and population health at the forefront. The article includes an evidence-based roadmap to serve as a resource to develop digital infrastructure and protocols to prepare for future health threats. The roadmap provides the rationale, the evidence, and key requirements for implementation.

Supporting widespread digital literacy

One of the recommendations is the development of widespread digital literacy. This is foundational because healthcare services lag behind other sectors in digitalization by about a decade. Developing digital leadership skills and improving the digital literacy of staff and patients is a key step in closing the digital gap in healthcare. The authors recommend that education providers and industry collaborate to develop meaningful curricula.?Collaboration between schools and industry is an essential part of digital transformation in healthcare.?

The schematic above illustrates the digital skills and capabilities spectrum versus breadth of required digital skills and capabilities for people working in healthcare.

• Level 1—Digital literacy to empower individuals. Basic requirement of every citizen to become a fully ‘digitally literate’ member of society. This includes using digital apps to engage with services, perform internet searches, and being aware of cyber security matters.
• Level 2—Digital skills for the general healthcare workforce. The ability to use digital tools and perform digital functions in the workplace. While the digital skills required in the workplace are often context specific, there will be some minimum requirements linked to processing information that is applicable across all domains and levels of seniority.
• Level 3—Digital skills and capabilities for the healthcare managers. This includes doctors, nurses, consultants, managers, policy makers, and decision makers. Ability to manage digital applications and technologies and also understand them on a systems level in order to make informed decisions about issues related to digital infrastructures.
• Level 4—Digital skills and capabilities for healthcare ICT professionals. This includes digitally innovative and creative individuals, organizations and businesses. Entails skills required in the IT sector, including skills linked with design and development of new digital technologies, products and services.

Next Steps

The next step is to reach a consensus on which areas to prioritize to achieve digital transformation in an equitable, inclusive and sustainable manner. The full open source policy document can be accessed online on the BMJ Global Health website.

References

Digital public health leadership in the global fight for health security , BMJ Global Health, February 15, 2023

Roadmap Authors

Bandar?AlKnawy, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences,?Riyadh,?Saudi Arabia

Zisis?Kozlakidis, World Health Organization,?Geneva,?Switzerland

Sasu?Tarkoma, Department of Computer Science,?University of Helsinki,?Helsinki,?Finland

David?Bates, Division of General Internal Medicine,?Brigham and Women's Hospital,?Boston,?Massachusetts,?USA

Antti?Honkela, Department of Computer Science,?University of Helsinki,?Helsinki,?Finland

George?Crooks, Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre,?Glasgow,?UK

Kyu?Rhee, CVS Health Corp,?Woonsocket,?Rhode Island,?USA

Mollie?McKillop, IBM Consulting,?New York,?New York,?USA

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Copyright ? 2023 Margaretta Colangelo. All Rights Reserved.

This article was written by Margaretta Colangelo. Margaretta is a leading AI analyst who tracks significant milestones in AI in healthcare. She consults with AI healthcare companies and writes about some of the companies she consults with. Margaretta serves on the advisory board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawai?i?Cancer Center @realmargaretta