IGF 2021 DC-DDHT Health Matters: Data & Technology In The Healthcare Sector

Time
Thursday, 9th December, 2021 (14:35 UTC) - Thursday, 9th December, 2021 (15:50 UTC)
Room
Conference Room 7
DC

Dynamic Coalition on Data Driven Health Technologies

Round Table - U-shape - 90 Min

Subtheme(s)

Leveraging infrastructure and technology innovation and development: How can the significant expansion of mobile infrastructure around the world, as well as other existing and emerging technologies such as satellite, fibre, and wireless networks, be used to expand affordable access?
Business models and investment: The IGF has frequently addressed the principles, approaches, business models, incentives and coordinated actions by various stakeholders (governments, local authorities, regulators, fixed and mobile broadband Internet service providers, telecom companies, local communities, etc.) to spur investments in connectivity solutions and enable more affordable Internet access in developing countries. What can the IGF do to capture and communicate the emerging consensus resulting from these discussions? What are the barriers to this emerging consensus being implemented and how can they be overcome?

Description

The Covid 19 pandemic has highlighted the role and critical importance of technology for the healthcare sector, especially in the use of ICTs for meaningful connectivity and access for universal healthcare.

For resilient and inclusive societies, the economic and social disadvantages with access to healthcare must be eliminated to reach the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #3 of Health and Wellness For All. The World Health Organization (WHO) has singled out technology as an enabler,to assist with the success of this goal.

For effective, trusted, secure, stable delivery of healthcare solutions through ehealth and mhealth and for the developmemt of technology based healthcare products and research and administrative tools, stakeholders from technology, health, business, legal and other sectors, must share a common set of values and a common vision for success. This session will engage and encourage the session's audience to explore these matters.

Session Part 1: Values, ethics, traditions, norms, risks, benefits, key performance indicators (KPI) and so forth, in the space where technology interfaces with health care services and products are the core matters of the Dynamic Coalition's 2021 book publication: Health Matters, Technologies Driving Change in Healthcare, A Community of Thought (see DC DDHT IGF webpage for free download), and the authors will present their opinion pieces.

Session Part 2: Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Holograms, Robotics, Blockchain, Space Technology, and prospective technologie such as Quantum Computing, are already in use in the healthcare sector. The sesions's public discussion will be a temperatue check of the current and emeging issues in the take-up of technology in the health and wellness sector.

1) The session will be virtual and hence all participants will have equal access to the virtual discussion space provided by IGF. 2) All virtual tools such as chat, Q and A, supplied by IGF will be available to all and the auduence can engage with the speakers in this manner. Speakers will respond through chat, Q and A and by speaking directly with the audience. The hands up virtual tool will be used for part 2 of the session, where the opinions and participation of the audience are being requested. A queue of audience / participant speakers will be established by order of request through the chat.Speakers will have presentation rights to share their screen for part 1 and the audience will be muted during this section. 3) Only IGF provided virtual tools will be used.

Organizers

IGF recognized Dynamic Coalition on Data Driven Health Technologies

Speakers

Dr Galia Kondova, Dr Christine Tan, Jorn Erbguth, Herman Ramos, Ashvini Sathnur, Amali De Silva-Mitchell; Frederic Cohen; Dr Amado Espinosa, Alex Buckham; and other members of the Dynamic Coalition.

Onsite Moderator

Not applicable

Online Moderator

Amali De Silva - Mitchell

Rapporteur

Amali De Silva - Mitchell

SDGs

1. No Poverty
3. Good Health and Well-Being
5. Gender Equality
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Responsible Production and Consumption
13. Climate Action
15. Life on Land
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals

Targets: The main SDG is #3, as technology is an enabler for reaching this goal as highlighted by the WHO. For inclusive health for societies technologies can be an enabler to assist with SDG # 5 and 10.The other SDGs form the supporting context within which the primary goals are successfully achieved, in partnership and collaboration with those stakeholders.

Key Takeaways (* deadline 2 hours after session)

A rich spectrum of issues were highlighted for international collaboration for ehealth, mheath and mental health. Muli-stakeholder awareness of issues faced by public and private sector developers and deliverers of healthcare, patients, technical community for quality internet, legal and finanial community with Access for All must be facilitated by the UN agencies and especially from UN IGF, UN ITU with WHO.

Covid 19 has accelerated the investment in ehealth and mhealth over the past two years in an already highly invested sector. There is need for rapid forward thinking policy making to provide guidelines, education and awareness for development and outputs that are safe, inclusive, ethical and have no harms. The managememt of data must consider the Rights of Passage of data moving from one system or data base to another &change of purpose of data.

Call to Action (* deadline 2 hours after session)

Urgent need for policies for collaboration on medical data sharing locally, nationally and internationally for public health for Covid19 and for ehealth development. Data Sharing Enabler systems must be developed for emergency situations such as Covid19 pandemic. Data Anonimity policies should be developed quickly for effective international data sharing.

Quality internet for ehealth and mheath for telehealth, wearables, administration for public and private needs with citizen support for onboarding including education and skills development for ease of access

Session Report (* deadline 26 October) - click on the ? symbol for instructions

 

The speakers for the session presented insights from their articles from the United Nations Internet Governance Forum recognized international, multi-stakeholder Dynamic Coalition on Data Driven Health Technologies 2021 Book: Health Matters, Technologies Driving Change in Healthcare, A Community of Thought. The book of articles is found @webpage DC DDHT under Intersessional Work of UN IGF Dynamic Coalitions, for free download.

The writers / speakers were: Alex Buckham on "Surveillance and mental health" ; Frederic Cohen with "Robotization to renew our economy in a post pandemic period" and "Biotechnologies to support humanity"; Jorn Erbguth with "Inherent limits of use of AI (deep learning) in healthcare" ; Dr Galia Kondova and Amala Arockia on "Blockchain and healthcare data, current developments" ; Dr Christine Tan on "Digital technologies for new healthcareapplications under Covid-19" ; Vivien de Tusch-Lec (speaker)  Dr John Allen, Dr Carina Tyrrell (team lead), Dr David Holbrook, Fergus Hay, Dr Annalisa Jenkins, Shabir Chowdhary Dr Laila Samady-Mustad, Eric Kostegen on "Investing in technologies driving change in healthcare";  Herman Ramos on "Health data, exploring the adoption of the internet of things in healthcare" and "The implication of the digitization of healthcare on data protection and security" ; Amali De Silva-Mitchell on "Cloud technology and its impacts for healthcare technologies on the internet", "The role of statistics in healthcare", "The age of telehealth, internet a partner for resilent economies", "Quantum's impact on the culture of technology for healthcare on the internet", "The UN Sendai Framework, risk management considerations for mobile and ehealth initiatives on the internet", "Platos modern AI Humanist Society", "An approach to  addresing childrens rights in an AI dominated society on the internet" and mentioned were "Seven Rights / Rites of Data Passage".   Articles spoken for were from Emma Slade on "Ethics and technology, reflections of a Buddhist nun" and Ashvini Sathnur on "Health matters, driving change in healthcare, book on artificial intelligence".

Amali De Silva-Mitchell Founder and Coordinator DC DDHT moderated the session. Dr Amado Espinosa provided the introduction to part 2, the audience discussion.

The diversity and depth of the topics presented, provided the audience with a rich insight in to the technologies and issues driving change in the healthcare field as well as issues that should be considered for the future. Quality internet is Key for effective delivery and servicing.  Data sharing paired with privacy are critical areas for international and regional collaboration to enable emergency response, building of effective pharmacare products, devices, services etc. Audience noted future work in this area as critically important.

The DC deliberated matters on ethics, ESG (environment, social, governance), branding, risk management, value propositions for multi-stakeholders , speed, trust and accessibility amongst other relevant issues through it's workshops and discussions and suggests seven areas for attention when developing healthcare and data systems which are called Data Rights/ Rites of Passage: 1) Multistakeholder Approach, Context and Intent 2) Diversity and Inclusion 3) Designs (including Green) and Data Management and Ethics 4) Protections, Privacy, Security 5) Communications Human, Computer and Interaction there-of, Interoperability and Connectivity 6) Feedback, Risk Monitoring and Bettering 7) Attention to Delivery, Service and Maintenance with Onboarding.

Wearables and the medical internet of things will proliferate for the benefit of patient specific centered medicine, out patient services and preventative medecine for the future and the use will be enhanced by 5G and 6G+ communications devices which require a quality internet. AI will get embedded on a large number of devices and the issues of bias and quality outcomes  need to be managed effectively with a human touch.

Over surveillance of society through device and communications and the associated data profiles must be managed with compassion, knowledge that mistakes can occur, so an open mind is required and deep insight applied for fairness and no harms which can inlcude even mindfulness of the human emotion of jealousy and attention to emotional intelligence.

Robotics and biotechnology will assist but care must be taken of ethical use and right mindset applications for technologies. Block chain, cloud, hologram, nano, quantum technologies have the opportunity to assist healthcare in many areas including data management, for research, trust and speed to attainment of goals.

Technology development and service maintenance costs require financing and financial investment  is  predicted to grow significantly. However, at the innovation stage financing may be still difficult to secure and new collaborations through P3 and other financial innovations will be of economic and social benefit.

Human society is not isolated, nor uniform and the creation of equal, fair, non-harms access for disabled, elderly, youth, gender, children, dis-advantaged, unconnected, low technically skilled and all segments of society including animal and plant medical health must be addressed (host country Poland) by an Internet United.

Reported by Amali De Silva-Mitchell