Patient empowerment is one of the most important milestones in the history of medicine and underpins the evolution of digital health, one of the world’s leading medical futurists told a conference in Canberra this week.
Dr Bertalan Mesko, director of The Medical Futurist Institute in Budapest, Hungary, said the evolution of digital health had become less about the accessibility of new technologies and more about the patient-doctor relationship which had traditionally been “like a hierarchy”.
“Patients can finally use technologies outside the ivory tower of medicine,” he said.
“In this way they can obtain data they used to have but had no interfaces to access them. All this is simply huge and we should be excited about that.”
Dr Mesko said the patient-doctor relationship was transforming to “an equal level partnership … where patients started sitting at the same table, only physicians could sit for hundreds of years since the dawn of modern medicine”.
“This is the paradigm shift that we call digital health, a cultural transformation that uses a range of advanced technologies that provide data to both patients and healthcare professionals,” he said.
“All this data were accessible to physicians before at the point of care, but now it has started changing.
“Not only have patients started accessing the same data, the same studies, same information, same second opinion, peer support, and I could go on forever, but they started using that data to get engaged with their own health and disease management. And this is indeed a paradigm shift.”
Dr Mesko was the keynote speaker at Australia’s first healthcare horizon scanning forum, held by Medicines Australia this week.
More than 300 senior representatives from patient organisations, government, medical and research sectors and the life sciences industry attended the Medicines of Tomorrow: Australia’s First Horizon Scanning Forum.
Medicines Australia CEO Elizabeth de Somer said the forum was designed to promote greater understanding of new and emerging medicines and to facilitate faster access to these innovations for Australian patients.
“The covid-19 pandemic showed us how important it is to have rapid access to innovative medicines, vaccines and treatments once they have been approved as safe and effective,” she said.
“We cannot predict the future, but we are getting better at forecasting future health needs. Using science, data and human ingenuity, the future looks bright for health innovation – and we must be ready for its arrival.
“Horizon scanning means looking at trends in disease areas, populations, healthcare and technology solutions to identify disruptions that could challenge our health system.”
Four case studies on disruptive approaches to deal with challenging disease areas were presented at the forum, including precision medicine for mental health, gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and combination therapies for cancer patients.
Speakers also shared opinions on how patients could benefit from horizon scanning and the key lessons from other countries’ horizon scanning systems.
Ms de Somer said horizon scanning was going to evolve over in Australia during the next few years, and it was important to start building the framework now.
“Without identifying disruptive technologies, we would not know what to prepare for. But we cannot just look at the horizon – we must act. And act in collaboration, as we did during the pandemic,” she said.
“Only by acting in partnership with industry, health experts, governments and patients will we be able to ensure that Australian patients have rapid access to the latest disruptive health technologies that can transform and save lives.”
Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler addressed the forum via video link.
“Our government is very pleased to see collaborations like today,” he said.
“Myself and my team from across the health portfolio are committed to improving the outcomes for all Australians and events such as today move us forward in the right direction.
“I’m looking forward to progressing horizon scanning in Australia to ensure our health systems are fit for purpose to bring innovative technologies to patients quickly.”
Ms de Somer said the forum had been a positive stride towards tighter collaboration that would ultimately benefit all Australians.
“At some point in our lives, we are all patients,” she said.
“We do not know what the future holds, but by working together, we can better prepare for the latest medical and health innovations to make sure no Australian patient is left behind.”
