Last week, the Health 4.0 Forum was held at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Vienna, which brought together experts to debate the future of the healthcare sector in a context of digitalisation. And whilst the digitalisation of the health sector represents one of the most promising developments of our times, it has brought along new debates on privacy, regulation, policy and primary use cases. This post introduces some of the discussions that took place during the event.

"Digital technology and information systems are revolutionising the healthcare field through, for example, the integration of big data, linked electronic records,  and harnessing data to support public health decision making" Prof. Theo Arvanitis from the Institute of Digital Healthcare at the University of Warwick

"Digitalisation and the use of new technologies in the healthcare sector can empower the patient, but we need to be careful to not leave people behind (e.g. those that have no access to new technologies)" Dr. Harriet Teare from the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (University of Oxford).

"Predictive psychiatry services are already available, but it is highly important to bring young people voices and experiences into the discussion and development of those services" Gabriela Pavarini from the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities

"There is no reason to mistrust the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the healthcare sector as long as: the final decision is with the human, the data is representative & only diagnostic report is left to AI" Georg Dorffner from the Medical University of Vienna.

 

This Health 4.0 Forum was organised by the UK Science and Innovation Network (SIN), BABLE and the UK Department of International Trade (DIT). It was further supported by Fraunhofer IAIS and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The forum brought together industry, government, and research experts from the UK, Austria, Germany and Switzerland to spark cooperation in health research and encourage the collaboration between industries.