Guaranteeing the sustainability of public health, the challenges posed by psychiatric care and the new tools available to professionals were discussed at the start of the conference ‘The health of the future: innovation and trends’, organized by elDiario .es with the participation of experts and professionals and in which the Minister of Health, Mónica García, participated in conversation with the director of elDiario.es Ignacio Escolar.
Now and in the future, primary care must be the “heart” of a public health system that is a “luxury,” the minister highlighted, prior to a debate table on the present and future of mental health in the that the participants have reflected on the growing needs of society in this area.
Present and future of mental health
The degradation of the first step of health care has no culprits, according to García, but rather those responsible. A nuance that does not hide the fact that in some cases “bad faith on the part of those who do not believe in the public system,” he pointed out. García has pointed to the social determinants of health as a determining factor in the prevalence of mental pathologies in recent years, an issue that has been discussed in depth in the first panel of the day, Present and future of mental health. The Government’s Mental Health Commissioner, Belén González, has not put in hot water. Social situations such as difficulties in accessing housing and job insecurity have overwhelmed the assistance system to the point of overflowing it, so that it is currently “broken.”
“We professionals are overwhelmed,” said Mayelin Rey, clinical psychologist at the Ramón y Cajal hospital in Madrid and member of the board of directors of the region’s college of psychology. In this sense, the low rate of professionals per inhabitant in Spain has been referred to, six per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the 12 to 18 in other surrounding countries. The diagnosis is shared by Santiago Pérez, director of the Psychology Unit at the HLA Montpellier Hospital and psychologist at the HLA Moncloa Hospital. “There is overflow even in the private sector,” he said.
“We have more resources than before, but they are not enough,” agreed Daniel Navarro, technical coordinator of mental health at Clariane Spain, in an intervention online with his table companions and in which circumstances such as the need to managing expectations of the effects of drugs, the need to reinforce community work and introduce psychological care in primary school or the risk of medicalizing normal situations such as sadness due to grief in the face of the rise of information and citizen interest in mental health .
Health and nutrition
The second panel discussed concerns about nutrition and the increase in obesity, especially in childhood. The director of the cabinet of the Minister of Health, José Manuel López Rodrigo, has explained that the Government’s strategy involves an “ecosystem logic”, in which all ministries are involved.
Issues such as breastfeeding, the need to reconcile family life or mobility require this joint approach. “Obesity is a reflection that something is happening with lifestyle factors,” said Santiago F. Gómez, global director of Research and Programs at the Gasol Foundation.
Ascensión Marcos, CSIC Research Professor, founder of the Immunonutrition Group and president of the International Society for Immunonutrition, has regretted that community projects for the prevention and treatment of obesity in children with very promising results do not have long-term continuity due to lack of financing. It has also warned about the difficulties posed by the proliferation of unscientific theses on weight and nutrition spread by influencers on social networks. “They do nothing but send hoaxes,” he warned. Against this, the Gasol foundation promotes the figure of “ambassadors” who promote scientifically proven habits.
López Rodrigo recalled that the Aladino study is underway, which collects data on the nutritional status and development of children between six and nine years old, or the pilot project to enable schools and institutes in the afternoons for physical activity and nutrition, based in a successful Icelandic experience, and which is intended to be generalized by 2030. The three speakers also agreed on limiting the advertising of “unhealthy” foods and energy drinks.
The challenge of Artificial Intelligence
The third panel of the day raised the question of health innovation and the possible applications of one of the contemporary technological fetishes, artificial intelligence. With the name ‘Health innovation: science, technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for a better future’, it has brought together César Hernández, general director of the Common Portfolio of Services of the National Health and Pharmacy System, of the Ministry of Health; María Luaces, director of the Innovation Unit-IdISSC of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital; Marta Villanueva, General Director of the Idis Foundation and José María Morera, Director of Market Access and Public Affairs of Bayer Spain.
AI should not lead to depersonalization, but rather the opposite; “It will enhance the humanization of medicine,” Luaces defended. It will allow doctors to “regain contact” with patients, “look at their faces and not at the screen.” Nor should we fall into fascination, Hernández has warned in this sense, about the multiple possibilities that technology offers, and rather focus on what is directly effective in the health of patients.
The interoperability of medical records between regional health systems and data management within the framework of European regulation for this purpose should guide the efforts of the private sector in collaboration with the public, in the opinion of Marta Villanueva. And it is necessary to “guarantee the culture of innovation,” defended Morera. If AI “is here to stay”, for it to have a real impact it needs to be developed through “co-creation”, Luaces said; That is, patients, professionals, the technology sector and the administration participate in it.
Greater inclusion and responsibility
The last of the tables had as its topic Towards a more inclusive and responsible health system. Mario Fontán, social epidemiologist and advisory member of the Secretary of State for Health, spoke; Raquel Rodríguez Llanos, vice president of the General Nursing Council; Manuela Villena López, manager of Institutional Relations at Bidafarma and Toni Lloret, director of Vaccines at Hipra.
Fontán has drawn attention to the need to apply an environmental criterion in decision-making, in a sense similar to the “ecosystem logic” previously used by Minister Mónica García’s cabinet director.
Both Llanos, Villena and Lloret approached the issue from their respective areas of specialty. Thus, the representative of the nursing council advocated improving the working conditions of professionals in the sector and giving more competence to nurses in caring for the health of healthy people, before the disease comes into play. The Hipra manager recalled the importance of information on one issue: vaccines, in which misinformation abounded with the explosion of COVID-19; and the manager of the pharmaceutical distribution cooperative opted to strengthen the logistical model for distributing medicines and highlighted the possibilities of inclusive labor integration that the sector offers.
Innovation as a vital attitude
The event was closed by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities, Juan Cruz Cigudosa, who highlighted the paradigm shift that the appearance of the coronavirus represented and the efforts against the clock to treat it. “It was our Apollo XI,” he said, referring to the United States’ race to the moon. The secretary highlighted that a lot of science is produced in Spain, but acknowledged that it is not transferred to society in the same way. And, in that sense, he defended that, although the information available today is global, the specific application must be generated locally.
Advances in cancer treatments, projects with million-dollar investments for treatment and data collection, the use of the results of clinical trials and the commitment to decentralization of their effects beyond Madrid and Barcelona have been other issues. that he has defended. His vision is specified in the phrase with which he closed his speech: “Innovation is not a tool, it is an attitude towards life and a commitment to the future.”