LIST OF PANELS

General Objectives

The world is increasingly becoming more digital, interconnected and person-centered. While the very nature of digital health projects addresses the availability of high-quality data, the digital transformation of health systems requires an understanding of essential governance practices beyond the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) use in healthcare. It becomes increasingly clear that the deployment of wide-scale digital health projects is less of a technical problem and more of a governance issue. We would like to discuss this topic which has started to gain great importance in recent years in an interdisciplinary panel.

Questions

What are the enablers and barriers of digital transformation of healthcare systems from public administration, public policy or governance point of view? How can we best address the “contextual” challenges in digital transformation of healthcare systems?

Scientific Relevance

Research shows that the availability of technological advancements is not enough for digital transformation of health systems. Indeed, the most important part of such projects is to understand the complexity of health systems and appreciate the national context, namely the political, social, economic circumstances. We should not take the digitalization projects in healthcare as technological endeavors only, but see them in a more holistic way, including the settings in which they emerge.

To give an example, Estonia, a small Baltic country with 1,3 million inhabitants, gained a reputation as a model of digital society. Successful e-health practices such as electronic patient records, digital patient registration, e-prescription are widely accepted among Estonians even though they are not older than fifteen years. Taking a closer look at the national context, however, reveals that e-health in Estonia owes its success to the developments that took place not within but beyond the healthcare sector. Historically speaking, a rapid modernization process after its independence from the Soviet Union and joining the European Union brought a fully-fledged market economy to this country. Very much in line with the New Public Management approach, the vital ICT infrastructure for digitalization of governmental services was accomplished through public-privatepartnerships. Thanks to its whole-of-government approach, Estonia has established an intersectoral cooperation between the ministries which helped integrate digital aspects into healthcare. On the demand side, Estonians, already being accustomed to digitalized public services, showed a high level of trust in sharing their data with their national (health) authorities. Thus, the implementation of e-health services in Estonia was not a matter of public debate. Rather, it was a natural result of its national digitalization strategy.

It is aimed to organize an interdisciplinary panel for scholars addressing either facilitators or barriers (or both) of the digital transformation of health systems in the diverse field of public policy research. Papers can address the digitalization trend in health systems as a natural outcome of the transformation process of other sectors, such as the process of creating digital public services. Digitalization of healthcare services needs the right set-up in governments and a positive attitude of patients or citizens towards using these services. Thus, papers can address this topic from push/pull sides giving details on supply (from government) and demand (from patients or citizens) factors. Examples can moreover include comparative research; studies that compare/contrast countries in the deployment of a particular technological advancement in healthcare and analyze the differences through the lenses of public policy, public administration, and governance. Qualitative exploratory/explanatory studies are equally welcomed; papers can include interviews, observations, case studies, surveys or outcomes from focus groups that aimed to explain why digital transformation in a particular setting has been successful or unsuccessful from public policy point of view.