Patient Ombudsman: Coordinated care is patient's top priority

Mr. Minister, the 9th Patient Empowerment Congress marks nine years that we have been together. Please tell us what you think are the priorities of patients in the changing environment, both economically and technologically? Poland is getting richer and richer, artificial intelligence is starting to enter. What should the management of care for Polish patients look like?

These priorities in part of the issues are the same. Of course, it's about accessibility to quality health services. Patients, too, are watching how the Western European world is facing all sorts of problems, and they expect, as part of these priorities, accessibility to modern technologies, including, of course, modern drug technologies.

I think that also such a priority and challenge is the development of artificial intelligence, and above all the issue of accessibility to data and also the discussion at the European Union level about transparency and accessibility to this data, of course, respecting the full secrecy of information in this regard.

Patients expect, and this is perhaps such a most visible priority, coordination at the level of treatment. The patient is mainly confronted with the fact that de facto he has to build this path for himself. And this path is a difficult one, with many different kinds of boulders to get around. The patient expects that when he gets to the health care system, that he will be guided through the system. That he won't have to run around looking for a doctor, looking for a place where he should have a diagnosis. Coordinated care is such a top priority for the patient, because it brings the greatest benefit. Under coordinated care, the patient has access to specialists, he doesn't have to look for them himself. Above all, he also has access to modern treatment.

Of course, what we are facing, which was highlighted by the pandemic, is the issue concerning mental health and taking care of, first of all, our youngest citizen, the youngest patients. Here a very big challenge is how to construct a health care system in which these youngest patients are properly taken care of.

There are large deficits in health care especially when it comes to personnel. As usual and everywhere in the world, deficits when it comes to budgets. And on the other hand, we have technological advances that can patch these holes in a significant way. You talk about data. There are terabytes of data in Polish health institutions, such as the National Health Fund, which probably should be used meaningfully. Artificial intelligence works on data. Have you heard of projects that would utilize this space? Are there ideas on how to use the data collected by the NFZ so that it can be turned into better more efficient, more effective management using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence?

On the one hand it's an opportunity, on the other hand it's a challenge, because of course that the National Health Fund, among others, has a great amount of data that would facilitate management, building a patient-friendly health care system. On the other hand, it's a challenge, because you also have to have the strength and resources to manage this data and be able to analyze it.

The budget of the National Health Fund is also, remember, the budget for those departments that would analyze this data. As part of this discussion, we're talking about perhaps bringing about more of this data management. Hence the European project on data management, transparency and information sharing.

I am convinced that sooner or later this must happen, that is, the development of artificial intelligence algorithms will cause us to process this data faster. What is important is to secure this data so that there is not some kind of uncontrolled leakage, because we know that this data is an extremely valuable resource for people who would like to use it without necessarily having good intentions.