ICTs in the Healthcare Plan 2021-2025

The TIC Salut Social Foundation is aligned with the strategies of the plan, presented by the Catalan Health System

Monday, 21 March 2021

Last Thursday, 17 March, the Catalan Healthcare plan 2021-2025 was presented in a public event in the Oval Room of the National Art Museum of Catalonia. This document focuses on four major strategies, based on the priorities detected in population health and the Healthcare System, and contains objectives that are closely related to the work of the TIC Salut Social Foundation. The plan features 70 actions, and places special emphasis on healthy ageing, with 8 actions linked to the elderly.

“The TIC Salut Social Foundation, as an organisation in the Catalan healthcare ecosystem, is a key player in the roll-out of the Healthcare Plan, as we are directly involved in many issues relating to digitisation and the use of ICTs in the healthcare environment,” stated the Director of the TIC Salut Social Foundation, Eugeni Fernández.

The plan, presented by the Catalan Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon and with the participation of the Director General of Healthcare Planning, Aina Plaza, outlines the following lines of action:

Strategy 1: Equal opportunities for health over a lifetime

Strategy 1 focuses on the fostering of people’s emotional and physical well-being, and on the prevention of health problems that can generate unequal opportunities for healthy personal development, due to sex or gender, socio-economic conditions, level of education, territory or age. Lifestyle and circumstances related to inequalities play an important role in the repercussions on people’s health and quality of life. The strategy is structured around two main pillars: Healthy Childhood and Health and Well-being from infancy to old age.

The Foundation contributes to this strategic line with projects such as InterSocial, which aims to define the standard controlled vocabulary to be used to interoperate information within the information systems of social care as well as between healthcare and social services and to improve the integration of data from social services in Catalonia. It also actively participates in the European hub Active and Healthy Living in the Digital World, which brings together key players in the sector to promote an active and healthy life.

Strategy 2: Healthy environments

Strategy 2 takes into account the importance of health in contributing towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and of all measures that help to mitigate inequalities. It encompasses traditional public health areas geared towards health protection such as environmental and food health, pollution control and the deployment of epidemiological surveillance. It also includes tackling emerging diseases and epidemics, climate emergencies and resistance to antibiotics.

Since the start of COVID-19, the Foundation has been actively involved in digital transformation projects relating to the management of the pandemic.

Strategy 3: Integration of healthcare

Strategy 3 encompasses actions for transforming the healthcare model, by addressing key issues and needs of the population. It aims to reinforce health and community orientation, integrated care in the territory and the integration of social and healthcare services. In all this, it places special importance on transforming the areas of primary health and community care, public healthcare services, mental health and addiction care, social and health care, and hospital care.

The three main lines of action in this area are: Territorial networks of community care and integrated health; Areas of transformation of healthcare services; and Integrated social and health care. These principles are the basis of many TIC Salut Social projects: the commitment to supporting the creation of territorial care networks so as to guarantee better accessibility and decision-making, and to make headway in terms of the territorial deployment of integrated social and health care projects. One such example is LATITUD, the digital model of non-presential care.

Strategy 4: Cross-cutting drivers of change

Strategy 4 comprises the aspects that are necessary to make the three previous strategies a reality and that need to be worked on jointly in order to revitalise the health system and transform it. A number of key elements are needed, such as, for example, citizen participation, professional leadership, health governance from different parts of the health system, research and innovation, and information technologies.

Line of action 13, Digital Transformation, constitutes the most important area for the TIC Salut Social Foundation, as the actions mapped out respond directly to its mission, both in terms of the projects in which it participates and in its different areas of work:

• Establishing mechanisms for the exchange of health information that promote the integrated functioning of the healthcare system.
• Promote digital transformation to improve integrated healthcare and decision-making.
• Strengthen the digital health skills of citizens and professionals.

Some of the most important projects in which the foundation is involved are: COMPDIG-Salut, to design a map of digital competencies and create a model for assessing and accrediting the digital competencies of health professionals in Catalonia; to develop the basis of the training content based on the map of digital competencies; and to implement training programmes in order to obtain the necessary digital competencies relating to healthcare.

Another project and feature worth noting is the Trends Map, an annual study carried out systematically by the foundation to determine the degree of digitisation of the healthcare services and tools in the healthcare ecosystem.

Also associated with this strategy is the deployment of the Health/ AI Programme, in which the Foundation plays an important role. This area involves the creation of synthetic data from different healthcare sectors, both for training AI algorithms and for training-oriented functions.