Webinar reflections: European Observatory on Health Systems and policies: State of Health in the EU, May 5th

6 May, 2022

State of Health in the EU: Companion Report 2021 (who.int)

https://ec.europa.eu/health/state-health-eu_en

https://eurohealthobservatory.who.int/publications/m/state-of-health-in-...

Interesting webinar and report from the European Observatory

"Building on the increased adoption of digital health tools beyond COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up ‘by necessity’ the implementation of major changes required to increase the use of digital health technologies. For several digital health technologies, evidence suggests that important enablers of theirebinar increased adoption during the pandemic consisted in changes to the rules that governed their use by health workers21. Even though changes to the regulatory and reimbursement frameworks contributed to increasing the adoption of digital health tools, in some countries these changes have been conceived as temporary measures linked to the COVID-19 emergency. Looking beyond the pandemic, it will be important evaluate their effectiveness and devise adequate financial and regulatory provisions.

"The creation of a European Health Data Space (EHDS) is one the key priorities of the European Commission in the area of health. The expected general objective of the EHDS is to ensure that individuals have improved access to and control over their own health data, can benefit from a wealth of innovative health products and services based on health data use and reuse, and that researchers, innovators, policymakers and regulators can make the most of the available health data for their work while preserving trust and security. It is envisaged that the EHDS would empower citizens through increased access to and control over their personal health data, and support their free movement by ensuring that health data follows them..

"As digitally innovative health systems emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, some aspects of their implementation will have to be recalibrated to the ‘normal’ context of healthcare delivery, so that they can serve a broader set of objectives such as health system efficiency, quality of care and accessibility. The use of digital health technologies induced by COVID-19 should be evaluated also to identify possible risks of

widening health inequalities through digital exclusion.

"Lastly, sustained investment in implementation and maintenance of IT infrastructure and equipment (including cybersecurity and training of personnel) will be instrumental to enable health systems to capture the full potential of digital tools to improve quality and efficiency of care. In parallel, taking steps to understand and meet the specific training needs of the health workforce (see Section 3) will be important to secure a positive legacy from the experience from the COVID-19 pandemic in this area.

"In most European countries, health workforce shortages proved to be a major barrier to increasing acute care capacity at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, countries implemented a wide array of strategies to increase temporarily the availability, numbers and flexibility of their clinical staff. For example, almost all EU/EEA countries mobilised medical and/or nursing students in their final year to perform support tasks as a way to increase the capacity of clinical staff for COVID-19 care. Most European countries arranged simplified recruitment procedures, extended the working hours of already employed healthcare staff and redeployed them from other care settings and areas with spare capacity to those most affected by the COVID-19 emergency.

"In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the prevalence of health workforce shortages across several European health systems and their role as a critical limiting factor to expanding care capacity. In the aftermath of the pandemic, a renewed focus on more sophisticated workforce planning, investment in skill-mix innovations and a sustained expansion of the workforce (including by improving working conditions to attract new talent) will be key ingredients of the policy mix to resolve this longstanding vulnerability and build a positive legacy out of the COVID-19 health crisis.

"CONCLUDING REMARKS Understanding the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will require further data analysis for years to come Mortality and morbidity increased throughout Europe as an immediate impact of the pandemic. In the medium and longer term, health systems will have to cater for many people suffering from post-COVID-19 condition and for those whose health worsened because of foregone non-COVID care and mental distress. Although countries have made significant efforts to develop stronger public health data collection and analysis systems since the beginning of the pandemic, gaps in their scope, granularity and collection methods remain. This also hinders their cross-country comparability.

"The full extent of the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will emerge only gradually. Health policymakers will only be able to design effective strategies and policies to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic if they have high quality evidence at hand. Hence, strengthening health data collection and analysis efforts will be crucial to support more evidence based health policymaking and the design of more effective, accessible and resilient health systems post-pandemic. The initiatives under the European Health Union, especially the European Health Data Space and the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (see Box) will contribute to this goal."

HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data

Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com