MILAN (ITALPRESS) – Continuous innovation, digital health and digital therapies are the pillars of healthcare in the Third Millennium, made more robust by artificial intelligence and its ability to analyze huge amounts of data and learn from it, revolutionizing the way physicians and researchers can make diagnoses, make decisions and optimize treatments and disease management. A new world of healthcare that, in order to be real, must equip itself with the prerequisites of regulatory, normative and organizational types. These are the topics covered by the Stati Generali della Sanità Digitale e DTx (States General of Digital Health and DTx), taking place at the Politecnico di Milano.A discussion between government, politicians, representatives of scientific and business institutions and the university world to identify a common strategy that puts digital therapies and digital health at the top of the country’s political agenda.There are three macro areas: data in healthcare and the role of artificial intelligence; digital therapies in Italy; and the skills and training of professionals for the development of digital healthcare.Digital healthcare is at the center of several interventions and investments within the PNRR and, as revealed by research by the Politecnico di Milano’s Osservatorio Sanità Digitale (Digital Healthcare Observatory), associated spending has grown by 22 percent by 2023, reaching 2.2 billion euros. If digital health care will launch a new season in communication between the citizen and health care facilities with the possibility for health care organizations, clinicians and the patient to have many services-from computerized and shared records to complete data security, from booking services to monitoring the patient’s condition, as well as many specialized services.Artificial intelligence is also finding significant margins of application: according to the latest survey conducted by the Digital Health Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic, among specialist physicians and consolidated the use of solutions for image and signal analysis, to which 19% of the sample has made use at least once in the last year. In addition, 29% of specialist physicians have used Generative AI to search for scientific information, a figure that has tripled since the 2023 survey.For their part, digital therapies truly represent the new era in which therapeutic interventions for many diseases are guided by evidence-based software resulting from rigorous clinical trials that, by making possible treatment pathways based on cognitive-behavioral interventions tailored to individual patients, greatly improve clinical outcomes related to a broad spectrum of diseases. From chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma or hypertension, from mental illnesses to addictions (which represent to date the true disease areas in which the first Dxs have been developed, tested and authorized), to the possibility of making a decisive impact even in rehabilitation pathways; just to name a few of the health care areas in which digital therapies can enhance therapeutic responses. According to the Milan Polytechnic’s Life Science Innovation Observatory, there are 93 DTx currently available in various countries (Germany, France, the UK, and the US), and the therapeutic areas most affected are psychiatry (37 percent), endocrinology (14 percent), rheumatology (10 percent), and oncology (10 percent). According to a study by the Lite Science Innovation Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, it is detectable that there is considerable interest among Italian patients with respect to DTx: in fact, 65 percent say they would be willing to use a digital therapy proposed by their primary care physician, and about half of the specialists and general practitioners would be willing to prescribe them if they had the opportunity.Among the main benefits recognized is the possibility of having more data available both to support clinical research activities (68 percent) and to make decisions (65 percent).Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said that “digitization must be a tool to decrease the differences, too many, that still exist in our Nation, and not to increase them. At the same time, we know that we have to ensure the future sustainability of our care system, also in relation to the progressive aging of the population. “On the front of opportunities for digital therapies, the minister spoke of a “cultural revolution.” “It is important to talk about it, we need to have an increasingly broad and open debate. A debate that must get to involve citizens, who must become the protagonists of this new digital health care,” he concluded. “We must recognize that to date digital health care and digital therapies still lack a clear frame of reference in terms of standards and procedures from the scientific and regulatory point of view,” emphasized Simona Loizzo, president of the Parliamentary Intergroup on Digital Health and Digital Therapies. “It is therefore the task of politics to intervene to catch up with other countries that are already moving organically. For this reason, as an Intergroup, we have presented a bill to define the areas of use of digital therapies and establish evaluation and monitoring bodies. “The Politecnico di Milano, through its Departments, Laboratories and Observatories, has built up in recent years a wealth of knowledge, data and information that will be decisive in guiding the systematization and better exploitation of these disciplines in what will be the healthcare of the Third Millennium. The outcomes of the working tables that saw the discussion of experts and the elements of proposal that emerged during the plenary session will flow into a summary document that will be delivered to the Minister of Health, the Presidents of the Senate and the House, as well as the Presidents of the regions.
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