LET’S SOLVE CHALLENGES
TOGETHER AT EHMA 2020

In recent years healthcare has seen significant transformation influenced by digital innovation. The adoption of new technologies can surely play a role in delivering secure and high-quality patient care while enhancing the efficiency of health care systems. At the same time, together with great opportunities, digitalisation also brings important challenges, in particular linked to how it can be actually implemented in the most inclusive, co-designed, efficient and effective way. How can health management facilitate sustainable digital transformation to happen and to positively impact the healthcare ecosystem?

Focus area(s): Data as a key tool for health managers

Digitalisation can undoubtedly reform our health systems and services, and data can play a crucial role in this transformation. However, the centrality of data comes with numerous challenges and crucial issues that must be taken into consideration by all stakeholders involved in the management of healthcare. This includes how to enable data access; how to use and share data; how to ensure security and privacy; and how to make sure that health care professionals and settings are data ready. What role can health management play in delivering a positive use of data? How can we deliver an inclusive and sustainable data-driven digital transformation?

Other areas and key words: mhealth & ehealth; digital literacy; data protection and confidentiality; big data; artificial intelligence; digital therapeutics; digital innovation; electronic health records and interoperability.

Systems and organisational governance is needed for the protection and promotion of good health. It involves researching and setting up strategic objectives, making policies, and developing laws and regulations, while securing and deploying the necessary resources, skills and competencies to accomplish strategic goals. It is therefore fundamental to examine how to develop a future-proof, innovation-ready health system governance, able to meet today’s needs and provide the right solutions to tomorrow’s challenges in order to deliver better and more organised care for citizens.

Focus area(s): Measuring performance in citizens’ centric health systems – How to make it happen?

For the systems and organisational governance stream, the EHMA 2020 conference will focus on bridging two key topics of discussion in today’s health systems debate: performance measurement and citizens’ and patients’ centricity. How can we ensure that performance is assessed in the most efficient way while re-organising systems to ensure effective citizens’ participation and involvement? How can we better inform and support health systems reform going in this direction? How can health managers lead the change and ensure the best performance possible for our health systems and services?

Other areas and key words: governance codes and best practices; health systems research; health systems performance assessment; citizens involvement; health literacy; health networks; leadership; change management

It is important that health and social care services are integrated around the needs of an individual, their careers and family members, with service providers delivering care effectively and services underpinned by flexible and sustainable mechanisms. Hence, there is a need for a holistic approach to health care through integrated services based on aligned workforces, structures, processes and budgets, focusing on anticipatory and preventative care to improve health and wellbeing.

Focus area(s): Breaking the silos – Interdisciplinary work to implement integrated care

Pros and cons of implementing integrated care have been extensively debated at a European and an international level. However, the question of implementing integration in different settings is still at the centre of the discussion. In a condition of health systems with limited resources and taking into consideration the digital transformation of care, what role can managers play as leaders for the integration of care? In particular, how can they drive interdisciplinary work and workforce-based strategies to deliver patient-centric integrated care?

Other areas and key words: primary care; partnerships; the role of workforce in the integration of care; integrated care best practices and models; digitalisation for integrated care; occupational health

With changes in health care and populations, the search continues for the best ways to improve patient health and wellbeing. One of the keys for health care providers is to change the way they engage with patients in order to shift towards consumer-centric health care. Personalised health care describes a model that tailors medical care to individuals and enables patients to pivot health care to meet their specific needs, often helping to diagnose and treat conditions they could not before. As a result, patients are increasingly in charge of their decisions as they become aware of the better outcomes that follow. However, this requires health care systems to shift from a focus on broad populations to a focus on co-creation of care and individualised consumers with their own needs, preferences, behaviours and attitudes while, at the same time, guaranteeing high-quality care for all.

Focus area(s): Personalisation vs quality care for all

Personalised care can improve quality of care for individuals, providing tailored and more efficient and cost-effective solutions in response to diagnosis and individual conditions. However, as with all healthcare innovative approaches, implementation remains at the centre of the debate and research in this field. What strategies can be used by managers to link all the stakeholders involved in the personalisation of care? What is the managers’ role in balancing personalisation and quality care for all? What practical approach can be used to develop co-creation of care frameworks?

Other areas and key words: health literacy; public participation and patient and user involvement; personalised medicine and care; hospital–patient relations; self-care; genomics

In order to remain accessible for futures to come, health care needs to be sustainable and to be able to adapt to the changing environment. The three pillars, being them “social”, “environmental” and “economic”, define the sustainability pathway of our health care systems. To achieve the sustainability objective, all stakeholders involved in health management need to look at the evaluation and reform of systems and the implementation of best practices in line with budgetary planning.

Focus area(s): The SDGs as drivers for sustainable health management

When looking at sustainability of health systems, every involved stakeholder, including health managers, cannot avoid taking into consideration the UN framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The framework, in its 17 key components, can be used as point of reference to drive sustainability-oriented innovation. Sustainable innovation touches upon a wide-range of fundamental aspects, including the centrality of environmental-focused actions; responsible use of energy; education and literacy; work conditions and economic grow; sustainable infrastructures; communities and cities; and the importance of partnership to achieve common goals. How can health managers use the SDGs framework to better organise and govern health systems sustainability?

Other areas and key words: environmental sustainability; waste management in hospitals; environmental impact of medicines (in particular antibiotics)

In recent years value-based care has been seen to provide an effective vehicle to improve health service efficiency with an outcome-based focus. It is a delivery model in which providers are paid based on patient health outcomes. Providers are rewarded when their patients’ health is improved; the effects and incidence of chronic disease decreased; and patients are able to live healthier lives. Such an approach has been creating incentives for health care providers to offer the best care at the lowest cost, resulting in savings in healthcare costs; patients receiving more value for money; and in an increased patients’ quality of care and satisfaction. However, much more remains to be done in terms of large-scale implementation of value-based healthcare and managers can play a key-role in making it happen.

Focus area(s): From theory to practice – delivering the value-based transformation

Value-based healthcare is surely one of the hottest topics in the healthcare debate nowadays. However, to deliver a true value-based transformation of our health systems, implementation strategies and a common and shared definition of ‘value’ remain to be explored and discussed. Managers can play a key-role in transforming a theoretical debate in actual change for healthcare. How can they drive this transformation towards the best outcome for patients? How can we bridge value-based healthcare and personalised health care?

Other areas and key words: procurement; public-private partnerships (PPP); outcomes-based models; leadership in value-based transformation; the role of health information for value-based change