Digital Transformation – Challenges and Chances

Abstract

The digital word in medicine started in the years of the Second World War by documenting cases on punch cards for statistical analyses on early computers. Until the 1990ies, the speed of development grew substantial: Mainframe computers were the infrastructure for many hospital systems worldwide and the first generation of smaller computers managed massively growing medical lab facilities. After the collapse of the Soviet Union several small countries has the chance to legally set up their health care systems in a more flexible way and thus became leading nations in the digital competition worldwide.  Many bigger countries were not so adaptive and remained in health system structures from decades before. All of them struggled to utilize possible innovations by changing processes into more efficient digital workflows. In the last decade, this effect led to the situation that the digital transformation of our societies, which we are facing now, has been positively utilized in several smaller countries like e.g. Netherlands or Baltic States and has caused a controversial historical change of national health care systems in some bigger countries like e.g. Germany or France. The perspectives for patient oriented health infrastructures are another highly dynamic development in this digital transformation process. As the digital transformation is more and more transforming our societies, health care systems that do not move to new processes and structures will fall back in international comparisons. That will cause challenging effects: non-attractiveness to health professionals and patients leading to inefficiency in international comparison. Therefore, every institution and every country have to address the digital transformation of our societies to keep health care positive and more efficient for patients as well as professionals.