To varying degrees, we have all experienced the benefits of telemedicine during and after the pandemic crisis. And despite starting from a delay accumulated over the years, Italy has also accelerated and today we are finally talking about digital healthcare in the present with a strategic look at the future around the corner. A future that starts from the 2.8 billion euros allocated by the NRP to innovate the healthcare system from a digital point of view. Will we be able to seize the opportunities we face to make the health system more efficient and closer to the citizen? Representatives of institutions, the academic-scientific world and companies are questioned about these and other issues in the second edition of the Health & BioTech Summit promoted by MSD, Deloitte and Intesa Sanpaolo RBM Salute.
Healthcare, innovation rewards: one euro invested in new drugs generates almost 3
by Irma D’Aria
An investment in health
Over 200 thousand patients assisted with telemedicine, 85% of general practitioners who will feed the Electronic Health Record and the digitization of 280 hospitals by 2025. These are some of the objectives contained in the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) which, for the digitalisation of the health system, it allocates 2 billion and 800 million euros. “PNRR offers an extraordinary opportunity for a true paradigm shift in patient management through the use of new technologies,” says the Undersecretary of Health, Andrea Costa, intervened at the event. “But in this case, the resources alone are not enough, a new way of conceiving the digital ecosystem is needed and to do this you need to be able to count on a system that allows data interoperability without which it will not be possible to obtain results. that we hope “. The pandemic has been an unprecedented accelerator for telemedicine but, to achieve concrete results for patients, concrete interoperability of data between public and private is necessary, as highlighted today in Rome as part of the Health & BioTech Summit.
Rheumatology: what it takes to implement telemedicine and remote assistance
The benefits of digitization
From televisions to home tele-assistance, passing through telemonitoring through sensors and personal devices, telemedicine and, more generally, digital health care allow better assistance to be provided to patients, even at a distance, thanks to data that can be safely accessed. The advantages that in some way we all found ourselves experiencing are undeniable: reduction of waiting lists, inequalities in access to services, hospitalizations, better adherence to cancer treatments and screening and savings with cost optimization. The Electronic Health Record, the pillar of digital healthcare, is the tool with which citizens can trace and consult the entire history of their healthcare life, sharing it safely and efficiently with healthcare professionals.
Apps, video games, virtual reality: the new frontier of digital therapies for chronic diseases
by Irma D’Aria
The regulatory framework
Digitization contributes to making the health system more efficient and sustainable, also favoring the transition from the current silo model to one based on the connection of care. Telemedicine and, more generally, e-health are regulated by many regulations. In the past eight years, at least ten national measures on digital health have been approved, more than one per year. The most recent (Decree Law No. 4 of January 27, 2022) outlines the role of Agenas (National Agency for Regional Health Services) for digital health. The national telemedicine platform, whose management is entrusted to Agenas, has been designed with a high-level architecture with interoperability characteristics in order to favor, in its local applications, the promotion and large-scale adoption of solutions of telemedicine. The national strategy within the PNRR aims, in fact, to promote and finance the development of a national telemedicine platform and the dissemination of new projects and solutions within regional health systems.
The acceleration of the pandemic
In the pre-pandemic phase, digital health tools were not very widespread. Between 2014 and 2017, according to a survey by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, about 350 sporadic experiences of telemedicine were found and only one in 10 citizens used the Electronic Health Record. In 2019, the Ministry of Health launched a survey on regional telemedicine experiences. The mapping showed that 282 projects were active in 2018, with a great heterogeneity in the distribution between the Regions. During the pandemic, telemedicine initiatives increased exponentially.
The solutions implemented by the private sector
The private sector in recent years has shown an extraordinary readiness to react to the difficult pandemic situation, not only through the discovery and distribution on a planetary scale of drugs and vaccines effective against Covid-19, but also through the implementation of telemedicine solutions that brought the patient closer to the treatment he needed, as the words of Nicoletta Luppi, President and CEO of MSD Italia: “Since March 2020, pharmaceutical companies have activated 247 telemedicine initiatives that have brought important benefits for people suffering from chronic diseases who have been able to continue to follow their care paths without moving from own domicile. During the pandemic, algorithms capable of favoring patient adherence to therapies were perfected in various Italian regions. MSD intends to continue to support these projects in order to encourage an ‘accelerated’ recovery also in good health ”. Intesa Sanpaolo RBM Salute’s commitment also goes in this direction: “Digital and technological progress can have a fundamental impact for the innovation of the entire patient management system. Precisely with the aim of further developing Intesa Sanpaolo RBM Salute’s digital products and services, InSalute Servizi was born, with which we want to contribute to giving a further boost to this ongoing transformation, evolving the offer and the methods of partnership with structures affiliated ”, he declares Massimo TessitoreCEO and GM of InSalute Servizi, Intesa Sanpaolo Group.
L’Health&Biotech Accelerator program
The Health & BioTech Summit also includes the second edition of the Health & Biotech Accelerator program, coordinated by Deloitte Officine Innovazione, which today sees the presentation and awarding of the 6 winning startups of the program. The Accelerator, whose second edition started on 14 December 2021, is supported by 20 partners throughout the healthcare and biotech supply chain, including, for example, TeleSerenità and leading private hospital groups such as the San Donato Group as Corporate Partner, Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the exclusive technology partner. Over 1,000 organizations from 40 countries participated. The project, supported by 20 technical / scientific partners, has among its major partners MSD Italia and Intesa San Paolo RBM Salute, which had already given the main contribution in the previous edition. “The Health & BioTech Accelerator is an Italian excellence that shows how the paradigm of Open Innovation is the winning one: only with a close synergy between all the innovation players can we accelerate and keep up with the great frontiers of transformation that are increasingly involving industrial sectors, including health and biotechnology, priority sectors for our country ”, comments Francesco Iervolino, Partner of Deloitte Officine Innovazione and Life Sciences & Health Care Innovation Leader Deloitte Central Mediterranean.
You are start-ups at work
The selected startups have already started work on pilot projects that will see them as protagonists alongside MSD and other corporate partners, the Deloitte team and scientific, clinical and financial partners. All in an entirely virtual setting that will also allow international startups a full and continuous interaction with project partners for the acceleration weeks. Among the winners is Euleria, an Italian scale-up focused on the production of medical devices and solutions to analyze movement and make patient rehabilitation and tele-rehabilitation more measurable, accessible and motivating. The Austrian Health Force, on the other hand, specializes in the field of automation through artificial intelligence of management processes in the hospital and insurance sectors. Mediktor, on the other hand, is a Spanish scale-up born in 2011 that has developed a medical assistant based on artificial intelligence for triage and pre-diagnosis. The IRST Nanoparticles research project of the Romagna Institute for the Study of Tumors “Dino Amadori” (IRST) was also selected, which developed a lipid-based nanoparticle conjugated with a chemotherapy drug to improve the effectiveness of the drug by reducing its side effects. systemic. Thanks to
Medicilio, on the other hand, patients and healthcare facilities can book home diagnostic services such as radiography, cardiology, ultrasound and blood tests with reduced waiting times and the same quality of hospital facilities but comfortably at home. Finally, PharmaPrime, an Italian startup born in 2016, which designed and developed the first European platform for the home delivery of drugs, while facilitating research in the pharmaceutical field and offering a wide range of services, from therapeutic adherence. of patients to the management of therapy. For more information: https://healthbiotechaccelerator.io/