The workshop was organized by the Lombardy Regional Foundation for Biomedical Research (FRRB) with the aim to foster understanding and discussion among experts and practitioners from both the public and private sectors in Europe on how big data and digitalization can support measures to promote health, as well as to reform health systems and ease the transition to new patient-centered care models.
Experts from Fundació TIC Salut Social of Catalunya, the Steinbeis Transfercenter Social and Technological Innovation in Baden-Württemberg and the Department of Health of the Lombardy Region animated the session dedicated to capacity building where voice was given to both regional and interregional cooperation and networking good practices in Europe. For the Four Motors for Europe a further step was undertaken in exploring the role leading European regions can play in the governance of health data and the way to make personalized medicine a core in the health care systems.
Experts from the four partner regions have been meeting and working together within the group initiated during the presidency of Baden-Württemberg and together they already joined forces to identify how to enhance cooperation around the challenges of guaranteeing equity in the digital health and care systems and how to bridge social and digital divide in times of demographic change.
Altogether the Four Motors for Europe have also been promoting partnerships for pilot projects that were presented for co-funding to the EC Horizon 2020 - Demonstration pilots for implementation of personalized medicine in healthcare. During the capacity building session on September 24th in Milan, the Four Motors for Europe could present lessons learnt in their cooperation as well as challenges in the transformation towards person-centered and integrated health-and care-systems as well as the governance solutions developed in the four regions for the effective management of data in health.
Key challenges that were discussed during the whole event are related to the creation of institutional frameworks allowing interoperability and cooperation with stakeholders, the role of sematic and standardization for data integration, how to bring personalized medicine to citizens and how to cooperate to jointly invest in key-enabling infrastructures, how to better engage patients and help professionals to better understand their conditions, the potential for co-investments from both governments and industry in order to create real value for patients.
