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Publication
Maintaining Public Trust in use of Digital Health for Health Science in a COVID 19 and Post COVID 19 world
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Executive Summary: The battle is far from won to defeat the coronavirus pandemic as it kills
hundreds of thousands, infects millions, and constrains so many in
lockdowns and social distancing. The challenge can induce dismay,
discouragement, even despondency – but the webinar that EAPM held on
30 June offered a very different perspective, visionary, exciting and
encouraging. It certainly did not duck the difficult issues, but in facing them
head-on, it also highlighted the dynamism and momentum of the science
and technology that offers the best hope of vanquishing the immediate
enemy, and of constructing a vastly more sophisticated approach to tackling
disease and ensuring healthcare.
Participants from the EU institutions, patient organisations, academia and
industry and from across a wide range of disciplines and experience
recounted not only their current endeavours to provide better protection
against disease, but also how they could see a move – with the right degree
of trust - towards radical solutions that can improve health for the future.
As with all EAPM meetings, the participation – both among panellists and
those who tuned in to the webinar – reflected the diversity of the challenges
of personalised medicine and of the multi-stakeholder involvement in
meeting those challenges. And the degree of consensus evident on many
of the issues discussed will be reflected in other EAPM publications
currently in preparation.
The webinar demonstrated the scope and intensity of the work underway
– often in the public gaze, but also behind the scenes – in devising and
deploying new digital techniques for deepening understanding of
human biology.
It illustrated how science is exploring new realms of molecular
diagnostics, how clinical researchers are designing more effective ways of
treating – and preventing – disease, and how patient organisations,
academics, authorities and policymakers are rethinking the approaches to
healthcare to ensure its efficiency and sustainability in increasingly
challenging times.
The webinar also demonstrated the strength of desire for – and commitment
to – closer cooperation among all stakeholders. The solidarity championed
by the Croatia Presidency in these challenging times, and the intentions
expressed by Germany for its Presidency, of deploying innovation for the
common good, were echoed and applauded by the participants at the
meeting. There is a sense of the opportunity for collaboration as we find our
feet in the COVID 19 era.
Germany will steer the EU through a challenging phase of evolution, with
decisions awaited on issues as weighty as major shifts in EU spending
patterns, managing the COVID 19 recovery, tackling climate change, and
the nature of the EU’s future relationship with the UK. There are important
health issues to be dealt with too – from the new multi-billion health
programme, the cancer mission and beating cancer plan, the continued fight
against anti-microbial resistance, and drug-related challenges like the new
pharmaceutical strategy, overcoming shortages, and coordinating health
technology assessment. But on these, as on the specific issues tackled by
the webinar, it is crucial that the EU as a collection of Member States needs
to find a common voice consistent with EU values, and to ensure that
actions taken are complementary and reinforcing, with the left hand and the
right hand working together. That way the chances are maximised, in the
health field and more broadly, of promoting what EAPM calls the 3is:
innovation, investment, incentive. Without this, healthcare advances will not
be translated into use in healthcare systems, leaving Europe trailing other
regions of the world as a fully integrated healthcare centre of excellence and
innovation.
The clear message shared among all was that securing and maintaining trust
is an essential condition to take advantage of the opportunities in the face
of increasingly rapid development and change. And the webinar itself, in
terms both of its multi-stakeholder participation and of the broad consensus
that developed around the importance of cooperation, was an example of
exactly that necessary integration of advanced science with human systems.
Description
Astrid Vicente, Coordinator of the Department of
Health Promotion and Prevention of Non- communicable Diseases, and a
Principal Investigator at Portugal’s Instituto Nacional de Saude Doutor
Ricardo Jorge, who is also the Vice-chair of ICPerMed.
Keywords
Personalised Medicine International Consortium for Personalised Medicine ICPerMed Digital Health Health Science Public Trust COVID-19