Home » Health » Could digital medicine make us more “human”? – Corriere.it

Could digital medicine make us more “human”? – Corriere.it

The digital revolution has entered overwhelmingly, but also kindly, in everyone’s life, especially in times of pandemic. It has allowed us to preserve human relationships and to continue working, it has been a precious ally in optimizing prevention, assistance and treatment systems. Technology is changing everything but what opportunities and what challenges does it pose for our health?

The debate and the competition

It was discussed at the «Tempo della Salute», in a meeting organized by Luigi Ripamonti, editorial manager of Health Courier. They intervened Paolo Benanti, Franciscan of the Third Order Regular and theologian, who deals with ethics, bioethics and ethics of technologies; Luca Foresti, CEO of the Santagostino Medical Center, who made a decisive contribution to the development of the Immuni app; Antonio Gaudioso, general secretary of Cittadinanzattiva; the Deputy Minister of Health Pierpaolo Sileri, who explained which initiatives are being studied at the government level. Goffredo Freddi, director of communication of Msd Italia, spoke about the “Patient Digital Health Award” project of the Msd Foundation, created to encourage and reward technological initiatives that aim at a digital transformation that is as “human” as possible: now in its third edition, the competition evaluated this year proposals or projects from Italy and Europe that had to meet the requirements of guidelines formulated by 52 patient associations.


Epochal change

To be truly useful and adapted to the needs of patients, digital medicine must make a qualitative leap and become more and more adherent to their needs and their ability to interface with it and use it effectively. Only in this way can he “humanize us”. «Digital is producing an epochal change – said Paolo Benanti -, with invisible tools that interpret reality, that is algorithms. As for health, we need a new way of relating between doctor and patient because numbers cannot replace human relationships. As a whole, the health system must take care of men and women in their entirety, with attention to different social contexts and sustainability ».

“Immuni has been underused”

We then talked about theImmune app, downloaded by nearly 10 million people. Luca Foresti stressed that there are no, and never have been, flaws in respect of the privacy of those who use the application, despite the many controversies in this regard. “Immuni was underused from the start, then it got better – said Deputy Minister Sileri -. Too bad because it would have helped a lot, especially in the moment when the contact tracing“. Sileri then spoke of the digitization of the National Health Service: «We have been talking about it for decades, now with the European Recovery Fund we will be able to give a real boost to this process which has so far been slow. The guidelines for telemedicine they were developed in 2012 and received by the Regions only in 2018. In 2019 a mapping of local experiences was made and there is a working group that deals with telemedicine, but time has been wasted and now it’s time to catch up. Investment in digital it will bring big savings in the long term ».


November 13, 2020 (change November 13, 2020 | 19:36)

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