Baltic Sea Region: Digital Health Literacy essential to benefit from new opportunities and enlarge the market

The 8th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, 13-14 June 2017 took place in Berlin at the Federal Foreign Office.

IC-Health was represented by Thomas Karopka, ScanBalt, as panelist in the session 14^th of June “Cross-border data transfer of eHealth data in the Baltic Sea Region”.

Thomas Karopka  proposed to consider four dimensions or perspectives in order to move forward in making the Baltic Sea Region as global frontrunner in cross-border data transfer of eHealth data

• Personal dimension or individual perspective (privacy, “data donations”)
• Societal dimension (social responsibility, research, public health)
• Economic dimension and business models  (standards, interoperability, open metadata, digital business models)
• Knowledge dimension in terms of Digital Health Literacy, DHL, meaning the digital skills of citizens, patients and the health care workforce

DHL is an essential part in this context and a prerequisite for citizens to benefit from new opportunities provided by the digital tools. In addition it is a prerequisite for the digital start-ups and established companies to have a critical mass of consumers for new products.

From a public health point of view DHL is essential to reap the benefits of more effective health care provisions and savings through better health outcome. This is only possible with informed and engaged citizens take more responsibility to manage their own health.

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