Digital Health

How can we help?

We might not have all the answers but we welcome all questions. Please reach out to us with media inquiries, questions about membership or non-political partnership, ideas or requests. We look forward to hearing from you in any of the official Swiss languages or English.

Get the latest digital thinking direct to your inbox. Join more than 14,000 fellow digital enthusiasts for our regular round-up of the latest news, project updates and ideas to inspire.

Download document

After subscribing to our newsletter you can download the document.

Digital Health

Digital Health is pivotal to ensure that Switzerland’s healthcare system is efficient, cost-effective and patient-centric. A digital transformation will increase transparency, accessibility and understanding of health information for the entire Swiss population. All healthcare actors need to collaborate to transition the healthcare system to the digital space and create a population mindshift.

Our goal and identity

We want to digitalise the entire healthcare system in Switzerland and make it patient-centric. We will do these by:

Empowering the population by raising awareness on digital and health literacy to lead to a healthy population (moving from a ‘sickcare’ to healthcare)
Building trust in digitalisation and placing the patient at the centre and giving him/her autonomy over his/her data
Being a neutral player to orchestrate all stakeholders of the ecosystem and build relationships with existing solutions, initiatives and digital nations

We want to bridge the existing gaps to ensure a coherent efficient healthcare network in Switzerland.

Challenges

Lack of national guidelines and standards

Switzerland has a decentralised healthcare system
Each canton of Switzerland has its own health policies

Lack of trust in digitalisation and fear of data storage

Patients are not well informed on the location of their data storage
Swiss citizens fear digital systems

Lack of health and digital literacy

49% of the Swiss population has issues to process information and use health services*
75% of the Swiss population has low health literacy related to healthcare system navigation*
Digital upskilling is not part of all the education curriculums leading to healthcare professions

* De Gani S.M., Rebecca J., Bieri U., Kocher J.P. Health Literacy Survey Schweiz 2019–2021. Careum Stiftung; Zürich, Switzerland: 2021. Schlussbericht im Auftrag des Bundesamt für Gesundheit.

Lack of data interoperability

Lack of standardisation, harmonisation and comparability between health data
Each organisation/department has its own IT system to store health data

Lack of legal framework for an integrated smart solution

Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD) follows the principle of double voluntarism
Swiss laws leave no room for innovation, new technologies or agility

Digital Health Committee

digitalswitzerland’s Digital Health Committee is active in shaping the future of digital health in Switzerland. This group of energised and committed members is working to digitalise the entire healthcare system and make it patient-centric.

Members of the committee

Projects

With our projects, we aim to foster synergies and knowledge exchange between different players of the healthcare including the citizens. This is crucial to accelerate the transition of the healthcare system to the digital space and make it patient-centric.

See our projects

Partnerships & Events

Through our partnerships and events, we find opportunities, identify synergies and create the space for knowledge exchange with other healthcare players to digitalise the healthcare system and make it patient-centric.

Learn about Partnerships & Events

Have ideas to share?

Do you want to leverage, boost, network and innovate in digital health? Get in touch, we would be happy to exchange with you and share more about our activities.