Henrique Martins, MD, PhD (Portugal)
Past President of SPMS (Digital Health Agency), Portugal
Keynote: Why Digital Health Matters: Evidence of Quality and Safety in US Hospitals with Advanced Digital Maturity
Digital Health diplomacy is a multifaced concept recently discussed in academic literature with increasing levels of rigour and nuanced interpretations that are relevant for the concrete actions when considering the creation of globally useful digital health assets, artefacts, and services. This talk will clarify the concept of Digital Health Diplomacy without necessarily too much theoretical discussing to allow time to be directed to two concrete “digital diplomatic” priorities.
One is the need for, the scope and the way or ways forward on the road towards a global electronic health record (G-EHR). Necessarily this means refining and stabilizing the vision and concept, linking it to global discourses (e.g. OneHealth, Global Public Health) and assets (e.g. International Patient Summary, Vaccination Passport) and exploring what could be the first and subsequent steps to aggregate efforts around that common target departing from a set of commonly agreed human rights and digital health interoperability common grounds (e.g. HL7©FHIR©, SNOMED CT).
The second, is perhaps less technical in nature, but operates at the level of political and societal understandings. A Global Treaty on Digital Health is needed as cross-jurisdictional and crosscountries and continents digital health services are becoming a wide-spread reality.
Dependencies and fears on data sovereignty are starting to block major cloud investments or rendering clouds to be “on premises”. Cross-country/continent prescription, global medical device production chains, or the need for EHRs and other digital tools certification and the mutual recognition processes all are trends that claim for written-down principles, rules and commitments to boost up trust and promote investment.