14 - 16 April 2015, Berlin, Germany.Most people take social media for granted nowadays and very few can imagine life without a mobile phone. Only the healthcare sector continues to create barriers. Patient 2.0, however, refuses to be excluded from progress: at conhIT 2015 in Berlin, experts will be discussing how medical facilities and, in particular, suppliers of traditional healthcare IT solutions should address these developments if they don't want to lose out on them.
"As medical practitioners we are increasingly faced with patients who obtain information on their illness and possible therapies from the Internet or use their mobile devices to record health-related data, although only for fitness purposes," Dr. Philipp Stachwitz, Specialist for Anaesthetics and Palliative Medicine at the Havelhöhe Community Hospital in Berlin explains. Palliative care is among the fields where the much-discussed "Patient 2.0" has become an increasing reality in the past few years: digital pain diaries are just as much in demand as social media concepts that allow pain-afflicted patients to share information and experiences.
Wanted: New ideas, new business models
Traditional healthcare IT suppliers often don't have a lot to offer in meeting patient enthusiasm for new technologies. "Up to now, these two groups have been totally incompatible", as Matthias Zippel emphasised. Mr. Zippel, who will be chairing a session on "Health data from wearables, apps and smartphones" at this year's conhIT congress (Wednesday, 15 April 2015, 9.30 a.m.), calls for IT manufacturers to pay more attention to these new topics than they have been doing up to now. "On the one hand we have a booming market for wearables and smartphone apps, and on the other hand we have a healthcare IT market that isolates itself inside a state-established system."
In view of this constellation, Mr. Zippel asks whether the healthcare IT sector isn't in danger of pursuing developments that fail to reflect actual market demands: "Too much time is spent on complaining about diminishing turnover and too little on developing new ideas and business concepts." conhIT 2015 intends to provide some food for thought on these issues. Topics to be discussed include technical concepts on online availability of health data, possible application scenarios from the aspect of the health insurers, as well as legal and ethical questions surrounding voluntary provision of medical data by the patient.
It pays to have a social media presence
In view of limited IT budgets, one of the main questions facing medical facilities in this day and age of social media is what type of social media participation brings them the greatest benefits. Dr. Peter Müller from the Stiftung Gesundheit, who will be co-chairing the conhIT Session "Empowering patients through social media and the communication activities of hospitals" (Wednesday, 15 April 2015, 11.30 a.m.) together with Dr. Stachwitz, is convinced that commitment to digital patient communication pays off for hospitals: "There is a lot of competition between hospitals and, particularly in the elective surgery sector, patients are very careful which hospital they choose."
According to Dr. Müller, hospitals which carefully inform their patients in advance about elective surgery have a head start. The Saarland University Medical Center, for example, is currently demonstrating how this can be done with the help of the Internet and mHealth applications. For several months now, the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery has been using an iPad application to create individual multimedia information documents in the course of consultations with patients. The patient can then read these at home so that he is fully informed of and prepared for the upcoming surgical procedure.
Online appointments are gaining in popularity
Dr. Müller sees digital appointment management - both for hospitals and for local doctors' surgeries - as another key topic in digital patient communications: "In five years' time, the situation will have changed drastically," he forecasts. Up to now, conservative estimates claim that only approx. 5,000 registered doctors - out of a total of well more than 200,000 physicians working in the outpatient care sector - offer some kind of online appointment system.
Dr. Müller is certain that "this situation is going to change rapidly, and online appointments will also become more important in hospitals during the next few years". Dr. Stachwitz shares this opinion: "Patients' demands are growing and they are becoming increasingly impatient about the lack of digital products and services." The future will most certainly not be determined by service providers specialising in one single field, but by all-rounders providing a variety of online products to medical facilities. Extensive process know-how is equally as important here as knowledge about standards and interoperability. From the commercial aspect, there are opportunities for young innovative start-up companies and established healthcare-IT specialists alike in the many interesting new business sectors.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.conhit.com
About conhIT - Connecting Healthcare IT
conhIT targets decision-makers in IT departments, management, in the medical profession, healthcare services and administration, nursing, doctors, doctors' networks and medical care centres who need to find out about the latest developments in IT and healthcare, meet members of the industry and make use of opportunities for high-level advanced training. As an integrated event, over a period of three days conhIT combines an Industrial Fair, a Congress, an academy and Networking Events that are of particular interest to this sector. Launched in 2008 by the German Association of Healthcare IT Vendors (bvitg) as the meeting place for the healthcare IT industry and organised by Messe Berlin, this event recently recorded 359 exhibitors and 6,495 visitors in 2014 and has now become Europe’s leading event for the healthcare IT sector.
conhIT is organised in cooperation with the following industry associations: the German Association of Healthcare IT Vendors (bvitg), the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (gmds), the German Association of Medical Computer Scientists (BVMI) as well as content participation by The National Association of Hospital IT Managers (KH-IT) and the Working Group of Directors of Medical Computing Centres at German University Clinics (ALKRZ).