Experts: “With Ai, towards ever more preventive and personalized medicine”

Technology can improve the chronic patient care path. Artificial intelligence (Ai), diagnostic imaging, teleconsultation and tele-monitoring are changing medicine which, thanks to digital platforms such as OPeNet – used by about 600 general practitioners – becomes more and more preventive and personalized. And the technology that helps doctors to intercept patients at risk of a disease was the protagonist of the sixth Talk by Allies for Health, the portal dedicated to medical-scientific information created by Novartis. ‘Technology: bridge between doctor and patient’ is the title of the debate, which was attended by Daniela Scaramuccia, head of the public sector and health for Ibm Global Business Services in Italy, Nicola Calabrese, president of NetMedica Italia, Francesco Barbieri, Head of Embrace Line of Novartis Italia, and Silvia Bencivelli, doctor, journalist, popularizer and also the voice of the podcast of Aleati per la Salute. Moderator of the talk Federico Luperi, Director of Innovation and New Media of the Adnkronos Group. By facilitating the dialogue between doctor and specialist on digital platforms – it emerged from the meeting – the chronic patient can be guaranteed, especially if in remote and poorly served geographical areas, the same access to care as those who live near centers of excellence. This is not a secondary aspect, if we consider that in Italy there are 24 million chronically ill. Furthermore – it was reiterated – after the lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic, the model that puts the hospital at the center has shown all its limits, both in the management of all patients. For this reason, healthcare is redesigning itself by focusing on territorial assistance aimed at home care and on telemedicine. And new tools come to the aid of family doctors such as OPeNet, a platform born from a collaboration between Net Medica Italia, Novartis and Ibm Italia, already used by more than 500 general practitioners throughout the national territory. One of the main qualities of OPeNet lies in the ability to integrate and exchange data with the management systems and platforms used by family doctors through the services of Net Medica Italia, to encourage new channels of collaboration with the specialist for a consultation on the clinical picture of the patient and the therapies administered. “This innovative open source platform – said Calabrese – was born from a partnership with Novartis and Ibm to provide doctors with an innovative tool that facilitates the care and management of chronic patients. We have activated the service for heart failure and psoriasis. It is a very useful tool “.” We activate a series of alerts that support the doctor with respect to taking charge of the patient – continued Calabrese – We started about 10 years ago. It is important to better manage and rationalize the pathways of chronicity, which absorb many resources, and facilitate access to treatment and improve the patient’s quality of life. With the pandemic the doctor-patient relationship has changed and with technology there is a new way of relating ” . Beyond the security of the transmitted data, “systems such as email and WhatsApp are not good: a single project of technological renewal of general medicine is needed, but the contact of the doctor, by the patient, must take place in compliance with roles and trust – underlined the president of NetMedica Italia – Inappropriate requests that arrive at all hours of the day and night cause stress. We need a cultural leap, to be doctors and new patients “. “Novartis – said Barbieri – has made available to OPeNet the know-how of the scientific model that dates back to several decades of support from doctors who are curious, have a great memory, but it is necessary to explain to them well the purpose, the usefulness that c ‘it is for the general practitioner, as well as for the specialist and the patient “. From February 2021 to today, the Head of Embrace Line of Novartis Italy recalled, “we have about 600 doctors connected and 900 have already requested to be included in the platform. Considering an average of 1,500 patients for each general practitioner, the benefits are for about 600 thousand patients “. The OPeNet program” also reviews the integration with the specialist. The interpolation of the data with the medical-scientific know-how has led to an algorithm that allows us to understand what is the best process for treating By applying this to information technology, we have educated the AI ​​that continues to update itself for this activity “, concluded Barbieri.