FORUM 7

Digital and Access to Care for All - Can digital innovation improve migrants’ health?

Thursday, 4 October 2018 | 16.00-18.30 | Room 2

Organised by MSD, the International Organization for Migration and the European Digital Therapeutics Partnership

While sustainability of healthcare systems and quality of health and care provision remain key challenges in Europe, policymakers are increasingly working to create a “Digital Single Market”, with particular resonance for the healthcare sector. Digital technologies have the potential to improve care by collecting, analysing and making use of reliable data – if we create the right conditions. In this session, we will relate current thinking around digital health innovation to its implications for equitable access, with a particular focus on migrant populations. Based on reallife examples and case studies from EU tech startups, policy makers, civil society organisations and industry, this session will explore what is needed for the data revolution to promote more cohesive communities and societies – and support the SDGs main tenet of Universal Health Coverage as well as Member States’ commitment to ‘leaving no-one behind’. We will begin with a series of short presentations by digital health companies that will set the scene on what digital innovations are currently being developed and the challenges of deployment in the EU. This will be followed by a discussion of NGOs’ experience of how these tools are being used – or sometimes misused – on the ground. Distinguished guests from international, EU and national level will then share their views and experiences. Topics to be debated among panelists and with the audience include: how electronic health records but also more broadly e-health and m-health tools are implemented; how the data collected can or should be used to ensure a better and broader access to healthcare services for the vulnerable population of migrants arriving to and living in Europe.