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Digital Health

Digital Health is a key 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.

Digital Health logo

Challenges

Challenges

Lack of national guidelines and standards

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

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
Challenges

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 naviguation*
  • 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.

Challenges

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
Challenges

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

Swiss Patient Journey Ecosystem Map

We have created an ecosystem map to illustrate the different digital solutions and initiatives which focus on enhancing the digital patient journey and the digitalisation of the healthcare system in Switzerland. We will update the content every quarter.
Digital Health Ecosystem Map

Digital Health Study 2022

We highly value the opinion of the population itself and we are therefore working with our partner gfs zürich on a population survey to better understand the needs and fears of the Swiss citizens towards the digitalisation of the healthcare system. We wrote and published a study, “A Swiss digital healthcare system: What the population thinks,” to showcase the results of the survey to the wider ecosystem.

WEF Breakfast 2022

The WEF22 breakfast of digitalswitzerland took place at the ETH Pavilion in Davos to discuss the topic of digital health. 50 C-levels came together to exchange on this important topic as it is only with a joint collaborative approach of all stakeholders in the healthcare sector can a common national vision for the successful digitalisation of healthcare be defined. Anne Lévy (Director of FOPH), Philomena Colatrella (CEO of CSS), Dr Christoph Franz (Chairman of the Board of Directors of Roche) and Dr. Conrad E. Müller (President of Pro UKBB Foundation) were present on stage.

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.

Partnership: DayOne Basel

Our Community Partner DayOne Basel provide invaluable in-kind support to our Digital Health initiative. We are so thankful for their ongoing support and shared mission to digitalise the future healthcare system of Switzerland.

Partnership: Swiss Healthcare Startups

Our Community Partner Swiss Healthcare Startups provide invaluable in-kind support to our Digital Health initiative. We are so thankful for their ongoing support and shared mission to digitalise the future healthcare system of Switzerland.

Contact us

Don’t hesitate to contact us to find out more about our various programmes and activities.

Jade Sternberg
Senior Project Lead Digital Health & Distributed Ledger Technology