• 100% of clinics are connected and accessible to everyone (images, ...)
  • eHealth curriculum, where future digital healthcare workers are educated
  • Anna Piperall (also a TED speaker, look it up!) - Managing Director at e-Estonia Briefing Centre

    • Estonia has coped with the crisis better than many, because of their digitally strong healthcare

    • Aging population, more chronic diseases, uneven quality and imbalanced access to care are factors that need us to take healthcare digital

    • Estonia's healthcare is based on solidarity principle, available to all

    • Access to services anywhere and anytime, data secured by blockchain

    • Who owns the data? In Estonia, it belong to the patients (control and access —> trust, use, better quality of service, more transparency and accountability)

    • 3 major pillars: confidentiality, availability and data exchange (different institutions can access different sources of data) and integrity (KSI blockchain; prevents manipulation without accountability - patients can see everything)

    • They have been preparing for this for 20 years (2018 was a big year)

    • Facts about Estonia's healthcare system - 40 million documents etc.

    • Changes due to COVID? HOIA app and data tracker, covid-map platform, open sick leave automatically

      • Private sector developed the services
      • Patient portal for accessing to data and seeing who has access to it
      • Consultations about the same condition from different doctors
      • eBooking systems for booking visits in different hospitals
      • e-Prescriptions...cut costs for pharmacies, doctors update medicine remotely
      • Healthcare 4.0 and personalized medicine - 20% of Estonia's genome in a biobank

    • The hardest part? Not technology, the most complicated parts was to educate employees to avoid resistance of adopting innovation

    • Consulting other countries? Of course, they're actively helping other countries and institutions.

    • Convincing older people? It took some time; different measures and campaigns to convince older people. They even had courses that taught people what they can do with eHealth etc. The service need to be user-friendly! It comes down to education and user-friendly services.

    • Tracking apps and privacy? Absolutely no link to people and their diagnoses, only codes...continue using this in the future. This is based on transparency and trust of the government. Estonia made sure they explained to the citizens.

    • What if our country is smaller than Estonia? You need to invest much more, but cheaper in the long run.

    • Confidentiality, without strong ID elements you can't give and restrict access to data. You can take this to court and log files can be enforced in court. This is not possible on paper. Some doctors lost their licenses for life! This is taken very seriously in Estonia.