The experts, trade
organizations and government representatives were welcomed by Dr. Hans-Jürgen
Heimsoeth, German Ambassador to Sweden, after which Andreas Hartl, Federal
Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Nino Mangiapane, Federal Ministry
of Health presented how eHealth is important for the continuation of growth of
the German economy. The German healthcare sector is the single most backwards
industry when it comes to digitalization which is of course a setback for an
otherwise world leading manufacturer and provider of healthcare products and
services. There are many challenges such as regulations, decentralization,
integrity concerns from the citizens but also the lack of perception of the
urgency to adapt and digitalize. Which was heavily debated by the participants.
After which MiH
reps from both countries, Henrik Moberg and Niklas Kramer presented current
plans for digitalization in healthcare. Followed up by a knowledgeable and
empathic presentation on political backing of these initiatives by Anders
Lönnberg, National Coordinator for the life sciences leading to heavy
table-knocking from all participants.
To move from the
regulations, integrity and policy heavy topic to a lighter subject, Julia Hagen
from Bitkom presented the challenges for startups in Germany and here both
parties could argue that there is a risk of brain drain if policy-makers and
the public healthcare providers are too slow to act on these challenges. That
entrepreneurs are increasingly looking for offshores markets to sell and even
relocate to. While investments were lifted as a challenge the major challenge
is rather revenue and unclarity on the regulatory requirements such as
CE-marking and GDPR.
This lead to the
area of data usage, which lead to a warm and intense debate, where both the
role of standards, updated regulations, and creation of roadmaps and guidelines
was lifted. Here the German Electronic Health Card was discussed as well as the Swedish
unlaunched initiatives such as HälsaförMig™, and the underlying software, where
the usage of bitcoin could be a solution. All parties agreed that a huge
problem in the legislature is that technology advances faster and it is hard to
judge past solutions with todays or tomorrows technical capacity. Further the
need of making legislative bodies and governments more Tech-savvy to understand
that the technology is seldom black-or-white but very adaptive to different
sorts of needs such as those regarding dynamic consent, opt-in and opt-out and
other things that is fully technically possible. Estonia was lifted as an
example of a forwards’ nation in how to understand the potential and dynamics
of the technology in a realistic and pragmatic way for government needs.
Finally, parties agreed that while Sweden and Germany has a lot to learn from
each other, we should also include best practice learnings from the outside in
particular in the set-up of consensus creation such as the Seqouia project for
sharing health data.
The concrete next
steps wanted are a formalized innovation platform to continue these discussions
to reduce barriers of entry to the markets, and retain and grow our homegrown
eHealth companies, AND on a more concrete tone the trade delegation 7-8
February to Berlin that SWECARE and the German-Swedish Chamber of Commerce
organize.
Zusammen!
