Latin America Global Summit on Digital Health and Telemedicine

 World Entrepreneurs moderates the Panel “Telehealth LAC” 

Brazil, 4 – 6 April 2019

In April 2019, the Brazilian Telemedicine University Network of Brazil (RUTE/RNP), the Technological and Education Centre of the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (CETES/UFMG) and the Swiss consulting agency World Entrepreneurs were invited by the Brazil’s Global Summit on Digital Health and Telemedicine to organize and moderate the Panel “Telehealth LAC”.

The panel served as the platform to launch the initiative DHI-LAC (formerly Telehealth LAC), a collaborative partnership between RUTE/RNP, CETES/UFMG and World Entrepreneurs to promote international cooperation for the advance of digital health and telemedicine in the region. 

Brazil’s Global Summit on Digital Health and Telemedicine is the biggest event of its kind in the Latin American and the Caribbean region (LAC), which convene multiple actors within the health and life sciences ecosystems around the World. Its goal is to boost entrepreneurship, technology, innovation, investment, multi-sector collaboration and global partnerships to scale and internationalize the LAC digital health sector

The Panel was co-organized by the partners of the DHI-LAC initiative, including Leticia Gennes, Director of World Entrepreneurs, Luiz A. Messina, Coordinator of RUTE/RNP, Paulo Lopes, Senior Health and Digital Health Specialist at RUTE/RNP and Monica Pena, Senior Telehealth Specialist and Regional Project Coordinator at CETES/UFMG. The Panel featured the interventions of Marcelo D’Agostino, Senior Adviser and Head of Health Information Systems of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), Emiliano López, the (former) National Telehealth Coordinator at the Ministry of Health of Argentina, and Laine do Santos, Director of CETES/UFMG.

The discussions focused on the priorities, challenges and opportunities in Latin American and the Caribbean for the development and strengthening of their telehealth national systems. It favored the exchange of experience and knowledge on relevant topics, including best practices on public policy and strategies, the development, strengthening and use of technology infrastructure and networks, human skills development needs, legal, ethics and privacy issues including regarding the collection, processing and use of health data and innovation efforts to scale telemedicine and telehealth at the regional level. The discussions also addressed the WHO’s Global Strategy on Digital Health, which was released for public consultation in early April 2019. This interactive Panel was followed by the exchange of experience with other two regional panels organized by RUTE, featuring the interventions of key stakeholders from the BRICS and the CPLP countries. 

The experts of the Panel Telehealth LAC, as well as from the BRICS and CPLP regional panels, concluded that digital health in general, and telemedicine and telehealth in particular, are crucial to accelerate progress towards Universal Health Coverage in their regions, helping the transition towards an innovation-led sector and growth that is based on the production and transfer of knowledge and data-driven technology for health. Moreover, they stressed that strengthening international and regional cooperation as well as the role of academic networks and knowledge platforms to boost multi-sector collaboration on research, education and innovation, fostering the entrepreneurial initiative, may play a critical role in speeding up this process.

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