This Discussion Paper centres on the notion of smart worlds for health, which encompasses existing and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) along with other digital health tools.
Smart worlds for health offer many potential benefits in areas such as prevention, diagnostics, treatment, health prevention and promotion and advanced research and innovation. However, smart worlds for health are not without challenges with concerns surrounding the overall accessibility of data, which is central to drive forward innovation, and practices of data sharing and re-use, which are notoriously difficult to implement in a fair manner. Further challenges include the need to upskill the healthcare workforce and the digital literacy of the population.
This Paper sheds light on the potential for good and for harm that describes smart health and charts the way forward for new technologies setting out a number of recommendations to overcome these challenges:
- Prioritise the implementation of European Health Data Space.
- Invest in digital literacy.
- Invest in smart health education for healthcare professionals.
- Invest in digital and health infrastructure at member state level.
- Ensure diverse high-quality data.
- Prioritise data protection and cyber-security measures.
Read the full paper here.