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On Friday 8 May (10-12h) , a virtual conference/webinar will take place, run by FutureProofing Healthcare and the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM), rašo EAPM vykdomasis direktorius Denisas Horgan. Registruotis čia!

The banner title is FutureProofing against health demand shocks: What Europe and Asia can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and implications for digital health. The outcomes from the session on Data Governance and Digital Health, for example, will feed into a later bridging conference to be held in June at the end of the Croatia Presidency of the EU and the start of Germany’s subsequent six months at the helm.

Given the current global attention to health-care system capacities and the heightened interest in public health in general, this online conference will address what can be done to ensure that the health systems of the future are resilient enough to not only handle shocks like a global pandemic but also respond to underlying forces that are shaping future health-care needs.

As suggested above, one focus is on how countries are using health data and digital health solutions in responding to the pandemic with a view to identify some best practices and discuss what the cross-regionals learnings from continents like Asia and Europe can be.

On top of this, we will discuss the implications for digital health, and how such solutions can be used to manage public health, diagnose and treat diseases as well as predict ill-health and how such solutions can be part of the toolbox to rebuild healthcare systems after the pandemic.

How much containment can we take?

It’s fair to say that the coronavirus outbreak provides health stakeholders with an unparalleled opportunity to examine and emphasise the importance of resilient health systems. But it has thrown up many, many questions - not least about civil liberties and public responsibilities, one versus the other.

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As many countries in the EU have experienced lockdowns in various shapes and forms, and of varying degrees of severity, we have witnessed disgruntlement, denial of the science and downright refusal in many cases by the population when it comes to listening to advice.

People choosing to forgo social distancing, heading outside when being urged not to, arguing the toss over wearing masks, holding group gatherings against advice, thus risking the more vulnerable and, in fact, pretty much everyone else, seeing governments act at different speeds, and watching treatments for other diseases apart from the COVID-19 virus being put on the back-burner, are just some of what has been happening as our lives have been turned upside down.

Add to this devastated economies, obliterated personal finances, stress for those who have actually social distanced for weeks…it’s been terrible and we are nowhere near the end.

There is little surprise that we have seen much cynicism with some government measures deemed ‘over the top’. Most of us have read Devyni aštuoniasdešimt keturi ir Brave New World (or are at least aware of the plots) and have a not-unreasonable fear of government over-reach (despite us letting our data be picked up willy-nilly in these social media times, and putting up with CCTV cameras and facial recognition technologies with barely a grumble).

On top, of course, are tracing apps recommended or issued by governments for the coronavirus which are yet another imposition that we have to be convinced is for the greater good. New Zealand, it seems, has decided that it’s own country’s app is worth it. (Of course, there are questions about exactly how well these apps will work, how will the app tell us whether the contact had with a third party is low risk, medium risk or high-risk? Will the information truly be anonymous?

That seems a bit difficult given that knowing who the app user is, where they are and who they’ve interacted with is the whole point.) Meanwhile, the eventual imposition of strict measures in Wuhan in China (we can only guess at how extreme) and the slings and arrows aimed at Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary, plus the fact that Spaniards are only now being allowed out for exercise and Italy is still under the cosh, illustrate that where governments don’t trust their citizens to do what’s best, they will make them do it to varying degrees.

There is a fear, of course, that once government gets more control than it’s used to having, it will be reluctant to let it go. Yes, we are in the ‘free west’, but we’re all aware of the North Koreas of this world, and that way madness lies…

Over in the United States we’ve seen more dissent than in most cases (although some EU member states have had their moments) with demonstrations by often gun-toting groups demanding lockdown lifts in various states. These are seemingly supported by US President Donald Trump who, as ever, seems to have a focus on the economy above all else, and not least because it’s an election year.

Attorney General William Barr has ordered Justice Department lawyers to “be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens”, pointing out that the Constitution “is not suspended in times of crisis”.

However, this is the same attorney general, by the way, who earlier in the crisis talked about effectively suspending the core constitutional right of asmens neliečiamybės. It’s a fine line, it seems. To be fair, though, the public displays in the US have thus far been few and the same applies for those in EU member states. At the moment, people seem to see the sense in the measures and are doing their very best to grin-and-bear-it all. For which we can be thankful if we are to trust the science.

Several countries seem to be at the peak now (at least of the first wave) and are basing part of their slow moves to less restrictions on upscaled testing - something that seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time pretty much everywhere, with some notable exceptions such as South Korea and Singapore.

The UK is an obvious example of where ramping up testing and tracing has taken seemingly forever. Even religion - often problematic at the best of times in many countries - has taken a hammering, with an obvious example being (albeit secular) Turkey banning religious gatherings in mosques and imposing weekend (and more) curfews during the holy month of Ramadan.

In Turkey right now it is not possible to travel between 31 regions without official permission, in a bid to stop the wealthier Turks heading to their holiday homes, potentially taking the disease with them. The calls to prayer are still to be heard over the rooftops, of course, but the prayer mats remain at home.

Meanwhile, a lot of us are going nuts just for the lack of live sport, which may seem trivial in context but, when added to isolation and curfews and the same old depressing COVID-19 news on the TV every day, only exacerbates the mental stress of the whole situation.

The disease is still a ticking time bomb, for sure, but so is any society trapped in these circumstances. Taken together, it does all beg the question of how far and for how long the current measures will be able to last without some kind of societal breakdown or, at least, an uptick in dissent.

Fortunately, most ‘civilized’ governments seem to be aware that there are barriers, and that at least the illusion of some semblance of a return to normality is necessary - despite that fact that we are being drip-fed ‘new normals’ in order to get us ready for what’s to come (in the same way that once we’d handled two weeks of social isolation and lockdowns, we were deemed better ready to accept another two weeks, then another, and so on.)

Is it one of the most painful truths to emerge form this crisis that governments don’t actually think we can be trusted 100%? And that quite a lot of citizens don’t think their governments can be trusted 100% either? As it turns out, we are just about trusting each other enough at the moment to continue the necessary journey. But for how long?

The EU and the rest of the world is walking a tight rope between trying to find ways of keeping the economy working while at the same time protecting its citizens from a horribly destructive virus. It’s a tough, but necessary, task. These issues will be part of the debate on Friday and emerging answers, to the extent that there can be any, will of course be shared.

Galite užsiregistruoti čia, and join speakers who include:  Mary Harney, former Irish health minister; Brigitte Nolet, general manager of Roche; Tikki Pangestu, former director of WHO Research Policy; Krišna Reddy Nallamalla, India director of global health nonprofit Access Health International and Leanne Raven, CEO, Crohns & Colitis Australia.

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