I have just been in Finland for the annual conference in healthcare IT where I did a speech on “From the structural reform to new hospitals projects”. It was a great experience, and the conference had over a 1000 participants and a great vendor area. On day two I was invited to participate on a expert panel arranged by the Finnish health ministry, who are finalising the national ehealth strategy.
The expert panel consisted of a group of very influential people including the CEO of Himss Stephen Lieber, Hal Wolf former of Kaiser, Hans Nielsen Hauge of Norway, Uwe Biddrus of Himss. We should comment and influence the final draft. I am rather proud to be accepted in that crowd and we did our best to comment and discuss the content and the direction the strategy described.
It is a very ambitious strategy, where municipalities, social services, hospitals, general practitioners are all covered in and end to end continuum of care strategy. I found it inspiring and the big challenge now will be to get it flying, coordinated and actually implemented within the Finnish system.
When we discussed the strategy, we landed on the subject on who will own the health data. It is the patients data, and the patient will in the future generate a lot more for themselves – we have seen a fraction on that with fitbit etc.
In the future the patient will probably meet the healthcare system with a huge amount of self-collected data, and say here you go, use it to cure me and to personalize my treatment. After a while Hal Wolf directed the conversation towards the issue, that it is not about who owns the data (strictly a legal issues) – It is who have access to the data. I think the first legal question shouts down the discussion more often that it opens it up – so the shift in paradigm was a very welcome gesture from a very knowledgeable man. In the end it is all about access and nothing more actually.
We need knowledge and information to be able to coordinate the care and bring healthcare towards personalised and integrated care. It took me a trip to Finland to truly realise that.
By the way. Finland stands on the brink on something great - I guess the magnificent vendor area is a sign to that. Investments will be huge and we should all help and look north - because a change in healthcare might come from that direction sooner than we know it.
The expert panel consisted of a group of very influential people including the CEO of Himss Stephen Lieber, Hal Wolf former of Kaiser, Hans Nielsen Hauge of Norway, Uwe Biddrus of Himss. We should comment and influence the final draft. I am rather proud to be accepted in that crowd and we did our best to comment and discuss the content and the direction the strategy described.
It is a very ambitious strategy, where municipalities, social services, hospitals, general practitioners are all covered in and end to end continuum of care strategy. I found it inspiring and the big challenge now will be to get it flying, coordinated and actually implemented within the Finnish system.
When we discussed the strategy, we landed on the subject on who will own the health data. It is the patients data, and the patient will in the future generate a lot more for themselves – we have seen a fraction on that with fitbit etc.
In the future the patient will probably meet the healthcare system with a huge amount of self-collected data, and say here you go, use it to cure me and to personalize my treatment. After a while Hal Wolf directed the conversation towards the issue, that it is not about who owns the data (strictly a legal issues) – It is who have access to the data. I think the first legal question shouts down the discussion more often that it opens it up – so the shift in paradigm was a very welcome gesture from a very knowledgeable man. In the end it is all about access and nothing more actually.
We need knowledge and information to be able to coordinate the care and bring healthcare towards personalised and integrated care. It took me a trip to Finland to truly realise that.
By the way. Finland stands on the brink on something great - I guess the magnificent vendor area is a sign to that. Investments will be huge and we should all help and look north - because a change in healthcare might come from that direction sooner than we know it.
