By Elena Bonfiglioli, Senior Director for Health, Public Sector EMEA.Health modernization empowers citizens to take greater control over the management of their health. Citizens are increasingly demanding personalized health information and quality care. Adopting information communication technology (ICT) in healthcare, therefore, is critical for its transformative nature that provides citizens access to personalized data which can increase levels of transparency and allow patients to make more informed decisions. These technologies can also lead to new research and development in the health field. Cloud computing, for example, has the power to gather large sets of data from a wide variety of sources and maintain them in a central location, which is fundamental to the golden age of discovery in which collaboration and global data-sharing lead to significant findings in health. This emerging trend of gathering big data is laying down the groundwork for discovering new ways to combat diseases.
According to Ed Percy, Business Director Manager for Healthcare at Logica, technology based research is transforming the landscape of health systems. Peter Hindmarsh, professor at the University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children outlines that patients' healthcare needs should not be overlooked. Agreeing with this line of thought is also Tomasz Szelagowski, Board Member, European Patients' Forum, who presents patients’ perspective on eHealth and ICT. Laurent Grumiaux, Director Sales & Business Development at Fishing Cactus, demonstrates the role of small-medium enterprises (SME) in health modernization. Finally, Diogo Reis, IT Manager at Hospital Fernando Fonseca and Consultant for the Central Health Record Solutions at the Portuguese Ministry of Health, emphasizes the importance of free flowing data between Member States.
Watch this video to learn more about future European trends in healthcare from experts across different fields.
We are approaching this topic again during 'Innovating for Better Health: Doing New with Less' forum taking place December 4th - 6th in Brussels. The event brings together high growth EU start-ups developing new technology solutions, health authorities at national and regional level, health providers and professionals, patients and policy actors from the European Commission, European Parliament, and the Member States to discuss and demonstrate how technology can impact the health sector across Europe for the better.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do interact with us on Twitter @MSEurope, using the #ICT4Health.
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