If digitisation in Italy has already transformed the scenario of several productive sectors such as finance and mobility, the same cannot be said for healthcare. Over the last two decades, healthcare facilities have been equipped with very different digital technologies and this has led to an overall fragmented and uneven approach when it has been necessary to standardise technological systems in order to offer integrated services to citizens. In all of this, the pandemic has had two main effects: on the one hand, it has accelerated the transformation towards a more digital and virtual healthcare with the adoption of new models of home care and telemedicine; on the other hand, it has highlighted all the difficulties of the healthcare system, which has only partly been able to adopt and offer a well-structured technological approach capable of following every aspect of the patient journey.
Research by the international company Graphical Research shows that the European digital health market reached EUR 47 billion last year and is set to grow by 17% until 2027, when it will reach almost EUR 140 billion.
The Italian figures represent only a small part of the European pie: only 7% in 2021 and, if the estimates are confirmed, 4.6% in 2024. Although the market trend is growing, the process of digitisation of Italian healthcare is still long and complex. Concrete help will come from the funds envisaged by the PNRR: according to what was recently illustrated by the Minister for Technological Innovation Vittorio Colao, investments of about EUR 2.5 billion are on the agenda for digital health, of which 1.3 billion for the creation of an integrated data infrastructure and 1 billion for the provision of digital health services.
Marzio Ghezzi, CEO of the Italian startup Mia-Carepositioned in the digital health services market with a digital platform, comments: 'We have a unique opportunity to accelerate the digital transformation of the Italian healthcare system and make it evolve through innovative models and tools. But we need to act fast, because we have a long way to go to catch up with other countries. Thanks to modern cloud-based technologies and a modular approach, we can rebuild the doctor-patient relationship that has been put to the test in recent years, offering innovative digital services for specialists, patients, and all the operators involved in the Italian healthcare ecosystem".
The difficulties that Italian healthcare is facing in this digitisation process are reflected in the current situation of the electronic health record set up in 2015: about 80% of the regions have less than 50% of the documents indexed and, as if this were not enough, the uploading is done with unstructured data and different standards, thus preventing interoperability between regional healthcare systems. It does not get any better when analysing user-side data: according to theOsservatorio Innovazione Digitale in Sanità (Digital Innovation in Healthcare Observatory) of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, only 12% of people have used the electronic health record and 62% have never even heard of it. The same research highlighted, however, the propensity on the part of doctors and patients to use the digital channels of telemedicine: if, before the pandemic, the tele-visit was used by 13% of specialist doctors and only 10% by general practitioners, during the Covid-19 emergency these percentages rose for both categories to 39% with an interest in using this service in the future of around 65%. The next step on the part of the health system will have to be to succeed in organising an offer that is as comprehensive as possible because the numbers show that this will be an inevitable trend in the future.
To this must be added the search for new modes of interaction for patient care, 'remote care', and the need to evolve the technological instrumentation used by healthcare personnel. All of this can be summarised in an innovative healthcare model of ' connected care ': this is personalised healthcare, accessible through new technologies and able to provide real-time communication between patient and healthcare worker. Telemedicine, remote monitoring of patients and the exchange of communication between doctors and their patients are all examples of 'connected care'. "It will be an indispensable aspect of future healthcare models where the patient and his or her needs will finally be at the centre of the digital services provided by healthcare systems. With this model, operators will be able to offer personalised care and remote medical treatment through the use of a modular telemedicine platform, exploiting wearable devices to collect data useful for treatment and prevention. All this now seems a distant future, but it is just around the corner.
Technological transformation is expected not only by citizens: according to research by Deloitte92 per cent of healthcare systems are confident that new technologies will enable them to offer a better patient journey, while for 56 per cent it will increase the quality of patient care and clinical treatment. One thing is clear: most of the planned digital investments are in the direction of creating a new patient-friendly digital health culture.
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