‘Digital Health’, main focus of the Meeting of the Map of Tendencies 2015 of the Fundació TicSalut

In an environment with more than 100.000 apps related to health and wellbeing in the different markets, the survey revealed that 8 out of 10 citizens are assisted by institutions that already use apps to provide health services. In this context, Enric Llopis, Project Manager at Fundació TicSalut, introduced the Health APP Portal and the Digital Health Platform, an app showcase of the health and social services sector, that will show apps that have gone through a clear process of approval and certification in a safe environment in which any mobility technology from the Catalan Health Department or Social Welfare and Family Department “is passing all the technical tests successfully with good results and will soon be available for professionals and end users”, according to Llopis.

Digital Health. People Centered Care

Line 10 of the Catalan Health Plan 2016-2020, the concept of “Digital Health”, understood as the process of implementing new information and communication technologies to healthcare products, services and processes, was a key element in this year’s meeting. The CEO of Fundació TicSalut, Dr. Francesc Garcia Cuyàs, made it clear that it is a “disruptive concept that requires us to rethink the care processes and, at the same time, to co-create them together with professionals, citizens and companies, so that we can define complete solutions from the prevention to the cure throughout the different moments in our lives”. In this sense, he added “we need to evolve towards the definition, creation, evaluation and purchase of solutions, and to do this technology is crucial.”

The roundtable was made up of members from the Official College of Nurses of Barcelona, the Mobile World Capital, the Catalan Health Service and it also included the citizens’ point of view, represented by Mar Callau. We discussed how Digital Health is transforming people’s healthcare with the use of ICTs, that is, how new technologies are involved in patients’ care and which are today’s barriers in this transformation. At the end, the journalist Albert Cuesta, a technology expert, analysed the challenges to be faced in the adoption of these new technologies, both in the professional and personal areas.

Map of Tendencies 2015

In its 9^th consecutive edition, the Fundació TicSalut, at the request of the Catalan Health Department, launched the Map of Tendencies 2015 in order to know the level of deployment of ICTs in the Catalan Health Entities (SISCAT), as well as the international trends in the implementation of ICTs in the health sector. This year’s edition, up to a total of 132 entities completed the survey.

Mr. Boi Ruiz, Health Councillor in Office of the Catalan Government, and the Mayor of Mataró, opened the 9^th edition of the Map of Tendencies.

The meeting was broadcasted live through the Fundació TicSalut’s website and on Twitter with the hashtag #MapaTicSalut. If you followed the meeting, see the most important pictures in our official Flickr account.