Observatory Venice Summer School 2021 and a new policy brief draw insights on the potential and challenges of digital health
Digital health holds the potential to improve the efficiency, accessibility and quality of health care. The COVID-19 pandemic made digital health tools an immediate necessity, and now is the time to build strategies that retain their added value and address the role of people, privacy, inequality and leadership.
The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies has dedicated this year’s edition of the Venice Summer School and a new policy brief to the topic.
Digital health: towards a post-pandemic future
The 2021 edition of the Observatory Summer School explored how digital health tools can help European health systems achieve their objectives, in particular during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the key findings from the School include:
- While developing the necessary technology is necessary for implementing digital health solutions, it’s not sufficient; it’s the people (such as end users) who are pivotal for ultimately driving health system transformation.
- When it comes to data and privacy, patients and citizens might be more open to share their data if they know why these are needed and how they will be used.
- Public-private partnerships can be an essential element of digital health transformation, but they have their own challenges, including of trust.
- For all its potential, digital health solutions can exacerbate inequalities because not all citizens, patients and providers are equally able to use them.
- Overall, leadership and political commitment are crucial to enable change and design learning health systems that are adaptable as conditions for health system transformation change.
The Summer School, which took place online for the second time in July, gathered 583 participants and 22 speakers from across the European region during five days. More than 40% of participants were from the public sector, followed by the private sector
(27%), academia (19%) and civil society (11%).
Policy brief: Evidence for European policy makers on the use of digital health tools
The new policy brief, “Use of digital health tools in Europe before, during and after COVID-19” takes stock of how digital health tools have been used before and during the pandemic.
Authors Nick Fahy, Gemma Williams and the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor Network call for active strategies to build on current momentum and retain added value from greater use of digital health tools after the pandemic.
Key messages from this policy brief are:
- Progress had been made in implementing digital health before COVID-19, but much unrealised potential remains across most European countries.
- Uptake of digital health before the pandemic was hindered by individual, organisational and systemic – rather than technical – challenges.
- COVID-19 provided the impetus for removing some of the barriers to uptake as many digital health tools moved from being an opportunity to a necessity.
- Digital health tools during COVID-19 have been used to support communications, monitoring and surveillance, provision of health services and vaccine rollout.
- Policies to facilitate the use of digital health tools during the pandemic focused on changing reimbursement, increasing investment and training health workers.
- To retain value from increased use of digital health, policies should focus more on creating a supportive environment for expanded use of these tools.
- Policies to promote the use of digital health should be underpinned by strategic investment and targeted research.
The policy brief will be presented during the European Health Management Association (EHMA) virtual conference on 15 September 2021.
Further information: