The TIC Salut Social Foundation presents the Catalan mHealth strategy at a session of the European mHealthHUB

Recently, Carme Pratdepàdua, head of mHealth at the TIC Salut Social Foundation, presented the Catalan mHealth strategy in an online workshop organised for the European mHealthHUB by representatives of the Czech Republic’s health sector. This session took place as part of the online Hub Czech Republic supporting workshop (2022), which can be seen here.

Firstly, Pratdepàdua explained the characteristics of the Catalan Health System to contextualise the mHealth activity. She explained that in a decentralised system with different health providers, having an interoperability framework is essential to ensure the correct sharing of information.

mHealth plan in Catalonia

Afterwards, the mHealth manager summarised the first Catalan mHealth plan. This dates back to 2015 and proposed various actions, such as creating new technological guides to promote the use of these technologies in the sector; defining an innovation observatory; creating an app accreditation framework to ensure data quality; launching an app showroom for patients and professionals to learn about available apps; and, lastly, offering various mHealth solutions.

Pratdepàdua then explained the need to set priorities in view of the large number of health problems that need to be monitored. An expert committee representing the various health institutions was established to analyse the cost-benefit of the different options. Thus, in 2021 it was concluded that one of the priorities should be monitoring people with diabetes, an example that she explained in greater detail during the presentation. 

Monitoring patients with diabetes

“In the case of monitoring patients with diabetes, we established a new model for relating with the industry to lay the foundations for data integration,” explained the mHealth manager. A new purchasing protocol was created to acquire everything from glucometers to medicines. One of the requirements was that glucometers connected to the app should be accredited. In addition, providers had to integrate the standardised data into the health system.

“36 different medical devices and apps are involved in diabetes procedures. They will have a large impact because there are 150,000 diabetes patients who are potential users,” Pratdepàdua said. Within this context, she explained the different challenges they face:

• Ensuring the quality and reliability of apps, with the same certification and an expert committee to evaluate them.
• Defining and agreeing on the relevant data and ensuring that it follows a standard for clinical terminology.
• Helping the industry be ready for change by providing information, tools and support.

At the end of the presentation, Pratdepàdua answered questions from some of the attendees.