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ALEC: a success story

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The fifth edition of the Artic Light E-health Conference in Norrbotten is an opportunity to look back on one of the major achievements of the AER e-health network. The event brought together 300 participants from 16 countries in the world this year around the themes of digital transformation & health equity.

Scale e-health awareness

The AER e-health network was created back in 2006 to support the deployment of e-health solutions and enable experience sharing. It has since been involved in the preparation and implementation of Smart Care, the largest EU deployment project of integrated care e-services and Engaged, a mutual learning network of diverse stakeholders in the field of IT innovation and active and healthy ageing. Since 2010 AER has also been an organising partner of the Arctic Light E-health Conference (ALEC) in Norrbotten which brings each time over 200 participants together to raise awareness, engage professionals, informal carers and patients around the deployment of e-health. The conference itself grew over time to become the major international event it is now.

“Houston, we have a problem? Norrbotten, we’ve got a solution!”

The ALEC conferences have allowed to take stock of the evolution in e-health over the past 7 years and more importantly to share experiences, good practices, stories… and the bumpy road to successful deployment.

Mutual learning and meaningful networking are among the main benefits participants mention when speaking about the ALEC experience. Over the years, speakers have included President Ilves of Estonia, who used to lead the EU working group on e-health, Sweden’s Minister of Digital Development Peter Eriksson, Dr. Robert Wah, CSC’s Global Chief Medical Officer and many other representatives from the care sector, business, academia and patients.

A multiplier effect

While the AER e-health network is a place to share and develop projects, it is also a multiplier for regional initiatives. As Agneta Granström said during the opening session of the ALEC 2017 conference “Alone we can only do so much. Together we can do everything”. This is also an encouragement for other regions to follow and use the tremendous potential of the network, not only in the field of e-health but also any other topic relevant to AER members.

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2012 ALEC press release

2014 ALEC press release

Committee 2 page

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Integrated care: tapping into social capital

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Consent, Trust and Enablement in a Digital World

In the framework of the ALEC 2017 AER organised a mutual learning workshop on social capital for integrated care. Dr. Michael Rigby, Emeritus Professor of Health Information Strategy at Keele University (UK) and Deputy Principal Investigator for the MOCHA H2020 project led by the Imperial College of London on “The Informal and Formal Virtual Care Team – Consent, Trust and Enablement in a Digital World ”

We focused on stakeholder engagement, specifically on the largely untapped potential of social capital in integrated care systems. While we at least theoretically know how to involve the professionals, it is, for various technical, ethical or other reasons, difficult to enable more people around the patient to get engaged as well. Technology is only part of the answer, we need to revitalise democracy through the engagement of citizens. …

Building social capital is revitalising democracy

Currently, all AER actions are organised in the framework of the 2016-2017 focus “revitalising democracy”. The ALEC 2017 AER workshop is no exception.

Indeed just as quality care systems need the sustained participation of the people around the patient, society at large needs the constant participation of larger parts of society. In healthcare this means to go further than the next of kin and children, and look at all the other people who at some point are in contact with the patient and are eager to support them (think of the role of grandchildren, . This relates clearly with the AER declaration (r)e-inventing democracy which states

Whereas: tapping into the human capital both inside and outside institutions via IT applications could boost innovation, increase engagement, save time and financial resources;

Whereas: In a democracy the role of citizens is central and their participation is the corner stone of legitimacy; (…)

We, the Assembly of European Regions:

(…)

2. recognise the need for multi-stakeholder approaches for economic, social and politicalparticipation to face societal challenges;

3. encourage the public, private and non-governmental actors to incite citizen-led initiatives;

4. underline the importance of design in public services to provide citizens with opportunities to

contribute to the public good with their talent; (…)

 

Keywords here are “human capital” “via IT” “multi-stakeholder”

Team work to look at social capital

Participants to the AER workshop organised in teams, shared their experiences and objectives. They also committed to help each others to achieve their mutual goals in order for the workshop to have a multiplier effect on the social capital they are building during the #ALEC2017 event.

The workshop provided both scientific expertise on the topic and a gamified experience based on the methods developed and available on the QI4U eLearning platform from the Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Northwest London.

Participants looked at the stakes and mechanisms in the engagement of the people around the patient. The engagement of a broader informal care team is to be envisaged in a wider process of quality improvement. Issues discussed included authorisation, roles, recruitement, communication with and recognition of the wider informal care team.

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ALEC 2017: accelerating Digital Health

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The 1 and 2 February 2017 the fifth Artic Light E-health Conference is taking place in Luleå, Sweden. Top-level thought leaders, politicians, business innovators and e-health professionals will meet to discuss and develop tools to design better health and networking.

Two main themes of the Conference: the Digital Transformation of Healthcare and Health Equity in the Digital Age.

The Digital Transformation of Healthcare

Digital Transformation is the whole scale change to the foundational components of healthcare: from its operating model to the infrastructure, from the services provided, to who receives them. It touches every function of healthcare: workforce training, HR, finance, reimbursement and evaluation models, through operations, technology, communication and business development.

Healthcare is affected by all changes occurring in society, from patient behaviours to tech, commerce and service sectors. Understanding the key challenges may let better understand which strategy to take and the priorities and capabilities needed to manage the digital transformation.

The key challenges are:

  • The level of maturity required for the health and social care system to adopt digital and integrated care solutions
  • The barriers hindering wide scale uptake of technology enabled care
  • The need to challenge the role of the health profession and reshape it for the digital transformation ahead.

Learning today how to build digital health eco-systems, innovative business models and accelerating the translation of ideas will help to catch up with the future transformations and build sustainable solutions.

The potential of digital healthcare lies in improving quality of care, boosting innovation, empowering patients and creating a sustainable healthcare system.

Health Equity in the Digital Age

The importance of dealing with Health Equity lies in the belief that everyone deserves a chance to lead a healthy life no matter the socio-economic status, demographic factors or the country of origin.

Digital health technologies can play an active role to reduce health disparities, improve health outcomes, and the potential of digital to improve access to high quality health information for vulnerable groups. How is the key question.

The key challenges of creating Health Equity are:

  • Providing care in underserved communities with poor healthcare and digital infrastructures
  • The barriers of low digital and health literacy for adoption of digital solutions among vulnerable groups
  • How technology has improved or hindered the delivery of quality care.

Accelerating innovation by sharing data can improve healthcare. Understanding how digital strategies empower people will make possible reaching remote communities, helping to eliminate health disparities, developing solutions that are adapted for people’s different physical and cognitive abilities, addressing low digital health literacy among vulnerable groups.

The evolution of new health technologies promises a better and deeper insights into people care needs and also through healthy beahviour changes, accelerating health development.

At ALEC there is the opportunity to understand the value of digital health and gain fresh perspectives, learning and being inspired by the global thought leaders shaping the future of digital health.

 

Photo credit Diana Robinson @Flickr http://tinyurl.com/hkglmad

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A recognition of excellence

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The 2016 European Summit on Innovation for Active and Healthy Ageing was an opportunity to highlight the excellent initiatives from regions across Europe. The Summit brought together diverse stakeholders to boost Europe’s competitive advantage in the Silver Economy

The Silver what?

Europe is growing older and while this is a challenge because society has to adapt its strategies, products and services, it could also be an opportunity. Indeed in terms of world demographic trends, Europe will become older first. If Europe innovates first it will get a competitive advantage. If a large part of the population is getting older this means also a new market is being created, hence the reference to the Silver economy. the Silver Economy is believed to grow faster than the Green Economy, which says something about its potential.

The Silver Economy covers new market opportunities arising from public and consumer expenditure related to the rights, needs and demands of the (growing) population over 50.<br>Public spending on ageing in the EU accounts for 25% of GDP and 50% of general government expenditure and is projected to grow by 4% of GDP until 2060 (see the Commission’s 2015 Ageing report).

The European Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing

The Innovation Union strategy outlines the way the European Commission decided to support European competitiveness and tackle societal challenges. The focus is on research and innovation.

The European Commission has identified active and healthy ageing/ demographic change as a major societal challenge common to all European countries. It also presents considerable potential for Europe to lead the world in health innovation.

The Innovation Partnerships are one of the elements of the Innovation Union strategy. The Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-AHA) brings together end users, public authorities, industry, all actors in the innovation cycle, and those engaged in standardisation and regulation.

The Partnership’s objective is to improve the framework conditions for uptake of innovation: Funding and investments in innovation need to be leveraged. But funding for research and innovation in European territories also needs to be more coherent and better coordinated.

Recognising excellent practices

Last year at the Conference of Partners of the EIP-AHA Günther Oettinger, EC Commissioner for the Digital Economy & Society announced a new Call for Reference sites. A total of 74 regional and local organisations have been awarded “Reference Site” status. The Reference Sites awards showcased the commitment of these local and regional organisations to invest over €4 billion in connected health and care for the ageing population until 2019 – an investment expected to benefit at least 4 million people across Europe.

8 AER member regions were among the winners: Catalonia (ES) ****, City of Zagreb (HR)*, East of France (FR)**, Friuli Venezia Giulia (IT)***, Ile de France (FR), Murcia (ES)**, Norrbotten (SE)***, Noord-Brabant Province (NL)***, Nouvelle-Aquitaine (FR)**.

Creating a shared vision

The European Innovation Partnership managed to engage stakeholders in the drafting of a shared vision on IT health innovation. This shared vision is known as the “Blueprint, digital transformation of health and care for the ageing society”. The Blueprint outlines how the journey of emerging digital “innovation to market” can be eased. It is also a manifesto for the alignment of innovation, economic and industrial policies with health and social care policies and with users’ and patients’ needs.  The Blueprint was handed over to Commissioner Oettinger by the Blueprint Champion and AER Member Encarna Guillen, Regional Health Minister from Murcia, ES.

This is also very much in line with the work AER carried out during its workshop on stakeholder engagement in health innovation ecosystems and the event it organised together with its partner networks “E-health: let’s find a common language”

Upcoming events

The ALEC 2017 event on 1-2 February will be an opportunity to further improve the dialogue between stakeholders. AER will, in particular, moderate a workshop on tapping into social capital and the engagement of carers and patients in integrated care systems.

 

ALEC 2017

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Norrbotten: Arctic Light e-Health Conference, 1-2 February 2017

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The Swedish region of Norrbotten is organising for the 5th consecutive year, the Arctic Light e-Health Conference 2017. ALEC is a captivating event uniting digital health professionals from across the globe in the arctic region of Norrbotten for two days of inspiration, networking and skill development. The event is hosted by the President of AER Committee 2, Ms Agneta Granström who is also the Chair of the AER e-health network.

Top-level politicians, digital health thought leaders, business innovators and e-health professionals will meet to experience thought provoking keynotes on digital transformation. Seize this opportunity to connect with peers to discuss digital’s potential to bridge health gaps, and develop tools to design better health for all. AER is a long time partner to ALEC and is recognised as leader in this field with its many years working on e-health and social innovation technologies. For the 2017 edition of ALEC, Ms Granström explains “we want, first, to focus on the digital transformation of healthcare and spot the necessary changes to get a better glimpse of what the digital health ecosystem looks like. Secondly, we want to explore how digitisation can be a key driver towards improved health equity and how to better design digital health services so that they can be used by all”

If you, like us, are passionate about leading the digital health transformation, designing inclusive health services, and adopting disruptive technologies to create health equity, ALEC 2017 is your forum.

‘Winter is coming’, so plan a memorable Arctic experience by booking one of the 16 daily flights to Luleå today.

Our event page.

 

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