Alignment among all players is the main challenge in digitalising the health system

• Other factors are the digital divide, a lack of digital education and connectivity problems.

Santo Domingo. – One of the main challenges to fully digitalising the country’s health system is getting the system’s different players to share a degree of alignment and interest, explained Fedor Vidal, CEO of Arium Salud Digital.

Other challenges are the digital divide, a lack of digital education and connectivity problems in the country, added Vidal on the “Es Cuestión de Salud” podcast, which also featured Michelle Aybar, a champion and promoter of women’s development and inclusion in the tech world.

“You have to understand that digitalisation isn’t turning an existing process into a PDF; it’s transforming that process into a different one through technology,” said Aybar.

She also said that digitalisation requires categorisation, but in health it is more complex because one symptom can point to different health conditions and many players are involved.

Both agree that digitalisation is growing exponentially and rapidly around the world, although there is still some way to go.

They discussed the losses, mainly financial, that the lack of a digitalised service represents for both patients and the various players.

“For example, if a doctor doesn’t know the patient’s history and, following protocol, orders a test that has already been done, the patient loses money that could have been used for other treatment costs,” explained Vidal.

He added that 100% digitalisation has not been achieved for several reasons: he believes it is a cultural process that takes time, requiring a change of mindset among everyone involved, aligned incentives across all players in the sector and a better understanding of what digitalisation means.

In the history of digitalisation, the health sector has lagged behind. Among all the players, he says, the starting point should be healthcare providers, with the patient placed at the centre. Visibility across all players creates transparency, and the element that harmonises that transparency is technology.

Es Cuestión de Salud is a podcast from the INTEGRA Ecosystem, of which Arium Salud Digital is part. It was created to keep listeners up to date and informed about everything happening in the health sector.

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About Arium Salud Digital

A company belonging to the INTEGRA health ecosystem that provides digital services and tools to transform how existing processes are managed in the health sector through interconnected systems, as well as facilitating interaction between the different players in the market and providing technological solutions for their effectiveness.

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