Wanted: Participants for a Delphi study on maturity of digital public health systems

Dear Laura,

thank you for sharing your call here on RG. If I may take you verbatim, I would like to add the following thought: In my view, the "maturity" of a digital public health system ought to be measured - among other indicators, of course - by the standard of data safety, data protection and, crucially, by the degree of a critical reflection on behalf of ALL stakeholders involvef in public health (mind you: this includes patients...) on which aspects of the public health process they actually wish to be digitized and which not. There will - hopefully - always be parts of that process which practitioners as patients alike may opt to keep away from the grasping hand of digital systems. Nota bene: I am well aware that this treads/trespasses into normative territory, but I think it's crucial ethically.

Best,

Julius

Hi Julius,

thank you for sharing your thoughts! Data protection regulations are indeed a thing that need to be there in order to digitalise a system with as sensitive data as the healthcare system. I see these points included in the overall topic of legal regulation and political support. Concerning the „which aspects they want to be digitalised“, this would belong to the umbrella category of social willingness. Please participate in the study and share your thoughts for indicators with us! They‘re very valuable.

best and take care!

Laura

Thank you, Laura! I'll have a look to see if it makes sense for me to participate. I am not a health care practitioner, though. I guess I responded to your call mainly in the role of a (concerned) citizen and patient (being on the receiving end of our German health care system). I am mostly concerned with ethical issues. These include, in my view, that, for instance, certain aspects of the doctor-patient interaction should not be digitized - neither in the sense of being digitally stored, nor even documented at all. I know this is a sensitive issue and probably speaks against the trend of increasing documentation, admin etc. in the health care system. Moreover, I think that we should exercise utmost care in not to overdo replacing physical (vis-a-vis/in-person/face-to-face) interaction between doctor and patient by digital communication. I see very grave dangers there. Anyway, at the end of the day, I think our great tradition of medical practise evolved out of the ancient, humanistic Graeco-Roman tradition (Hippocrates etc.). I think we must never loose this "human touch" in medicine. This is my main concern with the risk of over-digitising the health care system.

Thank you & all the best!

Julius

Dear colleagues, thank you very much for your initiative. I will distribute your call in my network. It might be a good idea to use the Netzwerk Technikfolgenabschätzung to reach out to more experts. Best regards Karsten Weber