Philips Israel President and Haifa Development Center CEO Guido Pardo Roques called upon the Ministry of Health today to lead an area of innovation in healthcare, with an emphasis on Healthcare IT, in cooperation with health organizations, hospitals, academic institutions, and leading companies in the field.
Pardo Roques envisions “a cloud-based information system that will allow every one of us, as patients, to access our medical files, which will record all medical information, from the day of birth, and will even provide essential information regarding health, and will allow one to take an active part in maintaining one’s health.”
Israel is a leading country in the field of digital health, and is unique in that each citizen is identified by a single identification number, making it easier to aggregate all the citizens’ medical information in one place. The health funds are working to integrate the medical information in their possession, but there is currently no operating plan to establish a medical directory under government control. The primary challenges are safeguarding patient privacy during the process, the question of to whom the medical information belongs, and the logistical challenge of transferring older information from paper to digital media.
Pardo Roques believes this is essential: “Such a field will allow doctors to monitor patients remotely, to get a holistic picture of each patient, such as test results and genetic profiles for each patient. It will be possible to share this information with colleagues and specialists around the world in real time. Developing such a platform will provide Israel with an opportunity to lead groundbreaking innovation on a global level in the field of healthcare.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 3, 2014
Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014