IE and DigitalES analize the impact of technology on health management

DigitalES (Spanish Association for Digitalization) recently held a workshop in collaboration with IE Business School on the Digital Revolution in the healthcare sector.  Participants in the event included Enrique Ruiz Escudero, Health Councilor for the Madrid Regional Authorities, Eduardo Serra, President of DigitalES, and Diego del Alcázar, President of IE.

The event brought together experts from the public and private sectors to examine the digital challenges facing the health sector, viewed from a global perspective of patient care and health management, and to analyze the technologies and applications that have transformed healthcare in terms of prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Enrique Ruiz underscored the “high quality of care” afforded by the Madrid regional authorities, the key role of technology in improving and sustaining this level of quality, and how it was not only important to extend life but also to ensure quality of life. He explained how in order to achieve this we need to provide more technology-based tools at every level in order to improve diagnoses and treatments, saying that this would require collaboration between the private and public sectors in order to keep new findings and advances in health technology coming.

Eduardo Serra, President of DigitalES, said that despite a history of mutual mistrust the public and private sectors were now collaborating and serving to complement each other’s services, in order to guarantee integrated, high-quality public healthcare.

Diego del Alcázar, Presidente of IE talked about the importance of innovation in the healthcare sector, to digitalize diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of illnesses. Del Alcazar also described how IE is at the cutting edge of advances in innovation management  in all its programs, including programs aimed at professionals in the healthcare sector such as IE Executive Education’s Program on Management and Innovation in the Healthcare Sector.

The workshop featured a panel on healthcare management and digital challenges in a scenario in which technology will be key for achieving a sustainable, high-quality system. Experts from the private sector stressed the importance of making technology available for patient care and disease prevention in an environment in which the patient demands a personalized service and greater role in decisionmaking processes. Both the information received, and the way in which it is received, must reflect a less paternalistic attitude, and a more personalized approach. Experts also agreed that the way patients and doctors interact, and the healthcare service itself, is important, as are safeguards to ensure confidentiality.