While digital health has been identified and advocated for as a facilitator to improve access to, provision and quality of health care, contributing to universal health coverage (UHC), its actual implementation and uptake in practice have been slow in many European countries. The potential of digital health is not being fully utilised so far, for improving person-centered health care, strengthening health research, and building better and more resilient health systems.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought rapid and unprecedented changes in the area of digital health; a multitude of innovative, pragmatic digital solutions have been developed and successfully used to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, both in responding directly to this public health emergency and indirectly for maintaining essential health services. However, digital health plans, strategies, policies, and actual implementation were not always coherent across countries in the European region throughout the pandemic, leaving space for improvement through cross-country learning and better collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be an opportunity for digital health to excel widely across the European region; whether this will permanently change the provision of health care is yet to be seen.  

At EHMA 2021 Annual Conference, the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies will host the session “Harnessing the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic to enable and accelerate Digital Health Transformation” on Wednesday 15 September 2021 at 15.15, aimed at providing a framework for understanding digital health within the general context of innovation and highlight the main areas of activity during the COVID-19 pandemic across European countries as well as barriers and facilitators for its uptake before and during the pandemic, drawing from the latest policy brief of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, that will be presented by Dr Gemma Williams, Research Fellow at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and member of the Observatory’s London hub and is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science

During the session, Dr Florian Tille, Technical Officer, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and member of the Observatory’s London hub and is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will present a summary of the lessons distilled during the 2021 edition of the Observatory´s Venice Summer School, which explored the potential of digital health to provide data for policy and practice, transform the provision of health care and fuel research, and strategies to sustain new digital health solutions post-pandemic.  

The session will highlight the main tenets for the development of the World Health Organization’s global digital health strategy and will allow participants to interact and exchange views to build on existing insights and further cross-country learning. 

Dr Dimitra Panteli, Senior Management Team at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies will facilitate the session. 

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