Digitalisation of the health sector requires the adoption of international standards and political will

• This was the view expressed during a panel on the new business models driving the digital transformation of the health industry in the Dominican Republic.

Santo Domingo, June 2023.- Fedor Vidal, an international expert in health technology and business, spoke at MediTalk Summit 2023 about the importance of digitalisation in the health sector, saying it requires political will, capital investment and the experience of other countries in order to scale up and focus the sector’s attention on the population and its wellbeing.

In addition to the need for an interoperable electronic medical record, the expert said, “the healthcare delivery, insurance, pharmaceutical and regulatory sectors must be interconnected in order to develop a preventive and predictive model that focuses on promoting healthy lifestyles, treatment adherence and disease prevention.” The CEO of Arium Salud Digital stressed the importance of adopting best practices and international standards, both for digitalisation itself and for structured clinical coding.

Public-private synergies must be promoted, with the government, as the governing body, acting as a catalyst that harmonises the principles of the country’s digital agenda to support the modernisation of the health sector under a complementary model that puts the patient at the centre as the main beneficiary.

Vidal, who was also head of IT at Johns Hopkins, cited the United States and Medicare as an example, explaining that an incentive was created to digitalise the entire sector, and important partnerships were formed that led to better interconnection and a faster response capacity in the health system.

He made these remarks on the panel “Public-private collaboration: citizen-centred wellbeing” at MediTalk Summit 2023.

Joining Vidal on the panel were Edward Guzmán, director of the National Social Security Council; Eduardo Read, president of the Dominican Association of Primary Care Centres; and José Manuel Vargas, director of the Dominican Association of Health Risk Administrators (ADARS).

Arium Salud Digital

A company that provides digital services and tools to transform how existing processes are managed in the health sector through interconnected systems, while facilitating interaction between the different players in the market and providing technological solutions for their effectiveness. Arium Salud Digital’s mission is to provide a digital health ecosystem that interconnects all the key players in the sector, with the aim of improving people’s quality of life through efficient and secure solutions based on state-of-the-art technology.

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