Elena López, HealthChain coordinator, participated on Thursday, October 10th, in the European Week of Regions and Cities during the session “Creating an Inclusive Digital Transformation: Unlocking the Potential of Smart Rural Areas.” She shared insights from the rural regions involved in HealthChain and their efforts to develop digital health solutions tailored to the specific needs of rural communities. The session, moderated by Michel Ehrenhard (University of Twente), also featured discussions with the Auroral and Drural projects, focusing on common barriers and enablers in rural healthcare innovation.
Rural Regions in HealthChain
Primorsko-Goranska (Croatia) and Castilla y León (Spain) represent rural regions in HealthChain that face similar healthcare challenges. These regions consist of large, geographically dispersed municipalities, making access to specialized healthcare more difficult compared to urban areas. Citizens often need to travel several hours to reach hospitals, adding strain to an already challenged healthcare system. Additionally, rural areas face shortages of healthcare professionals, social isolation, and an aging population, further increasing pressure on the system. Digital health innovations are emerging as a solution to these challenges.
- In Croatia, the Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka (KBCRI) is developing remote patient monitoring solutions and a telemedicine system aimed at improving communication between family doctors in remote areas and specialists in Rijeka.
- In Spain, Fundacion INTRAS and Hospital Los Montalvos are working on enhancing the care of palliative patients by considering their emotional well-being. They are developing a virtual assistant capable of recognizing patients’ emotional states by analyzing their voice and speech, allowing social workers and doctors to tailor treatments accordingly.
Both regions aim to reduce the need for hospital visits while improving patient care through these digital innovations.
Common Barriers
While digital health solutions offer great potential, they come with significant challenges. During the workshop, several common barriers across the projects were discussed:
- Low digital skills among end-users, which hinders their ability to engage with new technologies.
- Resistance to change within healthcare systems and communities.
- A lack of governance and long-term strategies to sustain digital health innovations.
Key Enablers
Digital health solutions are a great tool to improve the current situation but they do not come without challenges. Most of the barriers discussed during the workshop were common to the 3 projects including low digital skills of the end-users which difficults their engagement; resistance to change is a major challenge as well as lack of governance and long term strategies.
