What does the medicine of the future look like? RIH experts took part in Russia-Africa Forum

RIH experts took part in the forum "Russia-Africa: digital technologies as a driver of state development and international cooperation", which was held on April 14 in Moscow. The moderator of the forum's panel session on "Digital Transformation of Healthcare" was Olga Kobyakova, RIH Director.

"Technology has affected the healthcare sector. Telemedicine, remote monitoring of chronic non-communicable diseases, digital document management - all this has become familiar for Russian healthcare", she noted in her speech, inviting speakers from Russia and African countries to share their experience in healthcare digitalization development.

According to Vladimir Zelensky, First Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation, healthcare sector in Russia is developing with a focus on the patient.

"The ministry, as the industry regulator, oversees health care in general, is responsible for mandatory health insurance system functioning and arranges medical services provision, including digital ones, being healthcare information systems’ administrator", he said.

"Digital health services in Russia cover 57 thousand medical organizations, 145 million citizens, 711 thousand physicians, 1.5 million nurses", Vladimir Zelensky stressed in his speech. "This is a billion outpatient services, 20 million admissions and 40 million ambulance calls per year. Moreover, there are more than a million automated workplaces in healthcare sector of the Russian Federation".

"The Kingdom of Morocco is also committed to digital technologies development in healthcare. Digitalization plays an important role in the context of the African continent, which is characterized by many challenges in health, environment, and increasing pressure on African states resources ", said Abdelkerim Mzian Benfakih, Secretary General of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Kingdom of Morocco.

"The Kingdom of Morocco believes that the future of the African continent's health system will largely depend on the ability to take advantage of digital advances, on the one hand, and on the other, to hold back to protect against the potential harm associated with their use", Benfakih said.

Mohamed Mahmoud Dahi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania to the Russian Federation, told about Mauritania's experience in health sector upgrading.

"A new ministry has been created to modernize the management and digital transformation of health sector," he said.

Meanwhile, Alexander Ryzhikov, Deputy Chairman of the Federal Mandatory Health Insurance Fund, told foreign speakers how the work of the MHIF is arranged.

"Over the past year, we have been actively improving the quality of data", he said. "Since the regions have different digital literacy degrees, we had to work closely with all regions, and the result of our work: the data on insured citizens at the federal level is almost 100% formed, transferred to a single register, which allows for personalized accounting and control of all information, that significantly increases transparency," he said.

"Russia is also developing telemedicine", said Valery Stolyar, Head of Medical Informatics and Telemedicine Department at RUDN University, "where, by the way, many students from African countries study. Moreover, RUDN has signed six cooperation agreements with African universities and is ready to cooperate with African countries in the field of telemedicine", the speaker said.

"The importance of telemedicine lies in the fact that two physicians separated by hundreds of kilometers have an opportunity to discuss the patient's condition in the format of a video case conference. For example, a person needs to be sent for surgery. Or another case: telemedicine gives an opportunity to monitor patients at home, which is necessary for chronic patients, stroke survivors, or patients with Parkinson's disease", Stolyar explained.

Kirill Kayem, Senior Vice President of the Skolkovo Foundation, believes that startups support in this field is no less important in healthcare digitalization.

"We are registering a significant number of patents, the accumulated total is close to 5,300", he said. "All startups are carefully selected before receiving unprecedented support measures. Startups are exempted from paying taxes and receive subsidies for customs costs".

As Kirill Kayem emphasized, at the moment 18 of 21 products in the field of artificial intelligence in Russia are products of Skolkovo residents. Many of them are products in the field of video and photo image analysis. Since Russian scientists have developed some of the best competencies in the world in image analysis using artificial intelligence, they have begun to develop in the field of digital health in the first place, the speaker believes.

Sergey Zhdanov, Managing Director, Director of Sberbank Health Industry Center, told about the bank's projects in healthcare sector, working on the principle of "Complexity is already in the past".

"Sber today is not only one of the largest banks in Russia, but also the largest technology company in the country. We have 106 million customers. But behind the numbers we see a specific individual. Therefore, for Sber, movement towards healthcare has become a natural continuation of the general strategy, the center of which is the individual. After all, health is a basic human value", Zhdanov said, noting that the company is introducing artificial intelligence in medicine, developing medicines delivery service, as well as developing outpatients routing system and telemedicine consultations.

"Cifromed" company, which is part of Rostelecom PJSC, is in charge of automating medical processes, said Alexey Sedinkin, Development Director of LLC Cifromed.

"The company is the executor of all projects for development of unified state healthcare system in Russia", he said.

The session was concluded by Alexander Gusev, Director for Business Development at Webiomed, an expert in artificial intelligence at RIH, who shared his forecasts on global digitalization of healthcare development in the nearest future.

"If we look back 30-40 years ago and compare that situation with today's, we’ll see absolutely fundamental changes that show that we are already living in a digital world, and this trend has the nature of constant acceleration", he said.

"Moreover, the digital health industry is increasingly focusing on the patient", Gusev clarified.

"Today, companies with maximum market capitalizations in healthcare see the patient as their payer and consumer. And technologies are aimed not at treating, but at preventing disease", Alexander Gusev said.