The Societal Impact of Pain SIP has published its position paper on Digital Health. The paper highlights the need for action by European Institutions and National Governments in the area of digital health and pain.
Below the key recommendations of our Position Paper:
SIP calls upon EU and national policymakers to:
- Ensure effective implementation of ICD-11 by all Member States to contribute to the digitalisation of healthcare services, as these are complementary and can support each other
- Support the development and implementation of patient and clinician-friendly, interoperable, and validated digital technologies for pain assessment
- Establish pain and pain-related functioning as a quality indicator in the development of instruments of pain assessment via the use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs)
- Enhance the availability of, and the equal access to hybrid (face-to-face and digital) formats of pain management
- Enable the use of interoperable, standardised, secure digital health data registries, repositories, and records to facilitate exchange of cross border pain assessment data
- Allocate adequate funding to the development of translational AI and ML research in pain and pain-related functioning
- Allocate adequate funding and foster the infrastructure for digital and health literacy for all stakeholders, including clinicians and patients
- Ensure the subjective experience of pain remains an integral part of the assessment and management of pain
- Promote the exchange of best practices in digital pain and pain-related functioning assessment and management in Europe in an open format, and establish standards to ensure quality, reliable and evidence-based practices and information are shared to all
Read the full paper here.