transform primary care with a digital strategy

Nowadays, according to the Spanish Society of Family Physicians and Primary Care “The health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has led many of the world’s countries to rethink their health systems and how to best meet the health needs of the population.”

For the General Secretariat of Digital Health, belonging to the Ministry of Health, in its Digital Health Strategy report “advanced digital technologies such as massive data analysis (“big data”), Artificial Intelligence or the Internet of Things (IoT), have the potential to transform the health system in different aspects, both related to the daily activity of patients health professionals and their relationship with patients -increasingly supported by the use of data and communication-, as referred to the anticipation of risks, the greater precision of medical treatments and the development of research, without forget global management of the system and its resources.

Following this report, the strategy is structured into three large lines of action:

1. Development of digital health services people-oriented,

organizations and processes that make up the health protection system, with an equity approach.

2. Generalization of the interoperability of health information.

3. Boosting health-related data analyticsits determinants and the health system.

The report of the World Health Organization (WHO) “Building Resilience in Health Systems for Universal Health Coverage and Health Security During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic”, published in 2021, notes that one of its recommendations is to build a strong primary care foundation of health.

A primary care that can maintain and improve the innovations initiated during the pandemic such as digital platforms, telemedicine and the use of big data in public health through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.

The role of technology companies in this scenario

For this, it is necessary to carry out a consultancy in the health sector with a specialized company that is the one who designs the necessary strategy to follow.

Technology companies are helping to make the transformation of primary care a reality. Five areas of special interest and need for intervention have been identified.n, in which they hope to collaborate to create quantifiable benefits for health services, public entities and European citizens in the coming years:

• The digital experience: creating communication solutions focused on

the patient that prioritize the prevention of diseases and allow comprehensive care across the board, eliminating administrative barriers.

• The digital talent: rethink the evolution of different primary care functions, giving more importance to communication and digital skills.

• Improving clinical practice: In primary care, digitization makes it possible to offer an individual perspective of the patient and develop more preventive health care specifically designed for each patient.

• Operational excellence: maximizing limited budgets and allowing clinicians to focus on what really matters.

• Health care based on the use of data: that will allow primary care professionals to obtain a more complete and detailed picture of their patients, and thus treat them more efficiently.

Carrying out the digital transformation of primary care in our country is the goal pursued by both the Ministry of Health and the Autonomous Communities. The Plan for the Digital Transformation of Primary Care goes in this direction and the Next Generation EU Funds are an unprecedented opportunity to carry out the transformation of health systems, starting with primary care.