After a year of elections across Europe and beyond, how can governments refocus efforts on embedding digital change into health systems, ask Suzanne Wait and Catherine Whicher from The Health Policy Partnership
2024 has been called ‘the year of elections’ as some half of the world’s population have been invited to polls to vote at local, national and regional levels. Perhaps more than in previous years, health is likely to be prominent in any policy platform.
In the face of ageing populations, an enormous burden of non- communicable diseases (NCDs), growing pressures of multimorbidity and a health workforce crisis – to say nothing of health systems decimated in the aftermath of a global pandemic – it would be reasonable to expect bold visions and decisive action from candidates and elected officials.
Indeed, mere hours after the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) general election in early July, newly appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting declared that ‘the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken’ and signalled a wholesale reform of the country’s beloved but blighted health system. A significant part of this reform will involve further accelerating the digitalisation of healthcare.
While the UK’s NHS has been faster than most health systems to digitalise, starting more than a decade ago, several gaps remain. Looking to Streeting to identify lasting solutions, experts are hoping for measures such as digitalisation including cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to address workforce capacity, reduce waiting times and otherwise ease the enormous pressures on stretched resources across the country’s health system.
Leading the world on AI legislation
Across the Channel, thought leaders propose that the European Union has the opportunity to become a digital powerhouse that leverages public- private partnerships to ensure better access to, quality of and continuity of healthcare. Some of the most significant shifts in this space actually pre-date this year’s polls: the European Health Data Space (EHDS) represents the first common EU data space.
Establishing a common framework and infrastructure for the use of health data across the 27 Member States will enable EU citizens to better access, control, and share their electronic personal health data wherever they go in the single market. The regulation is next expected to be formally adopted by the Council, with implementation beginning in stages as early as this autumn. Once fully enacted, it will likely transform domestic and cross-border delivery of healthcare across the EU and enable secure and transparent use of health data to inform the research and innovation that will shape healthcare for the coming years.
The EU AI Act
In the field of AI, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act is the first comprehensive regulatory framework of its kind. It promotes the development, deployment and use of AI in alignment with Europe’s priorities, preferences and principles. The Act proposes a risk-based framework to define and regulate high-risk AI – with healthcare one such ‘high-risk’ application. It aims to promote transparency, accountability, and consistency, with the aim of generating trust among the general public and confidence in clarity among developers and deployers of AI technologies.
While both the EHDS and EU AI Act will have their most immediate impact within EU Member States, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) before them, they will also impact beyond EU borders. Careful attention should be paid to how different countries implement these regulations locally, and ensuring interoperability across Member States will be crucial to the success of both the EHDS and the AI Act.
Digitalisation as a vehicle for – not a measure of – success
Democracy may sometimes mistakenly feel like a once-per-election-cycle activity, but the work of understanding, representing, protecting and promoting societal interests should be constant. What, then, is the new opportunity afforded by a bumper year for elections? For starters, ballots offer a means of reconnecting governments with their people’s most urgent priorities. With so many governments around the world resetting, we may be seeing an unprecedented opportunity for politicians and civil servants to take courageous steps to fix many of the issues that have challenged our health systems for years.
The ultimate test of any of these new policies will be how they advance healthcare and population health. A sobering global statistic is that 95–97% of health data generated within healthcare is thought to go unused. With advances in cloud computing, AI, and digital technology, we have a unique opportunity to transform how we use, store, and interpret this data, finally enabling timely analysis of the wealth of data that surrounds individuals. This, in turn, can fundamentally improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare, making all decisions more tailored to each individual’s needs.
Digitalisation and better use of data are not a silver bullet, but they do present golden opportunities for health systems. Let’s hope policymakers are ready to play the long game and cement the changes needed to truly power the transformation of health systems for the benefit of generations to come.
