For many years, the public actors in charge of financing social health and welfare systems have had to face the dual challenge of maintaining internal efficiency while adapting to health needs that have changed completely since they were initially designed. Between budgetary constraints and the explosion of care costs due to an ageing population as well as the development of chronic pathologies, whether linked to “lifestyle” or environmental factors, social security actors must reinvent their model.
What are the challenges they face? The need to act on a large scale involving millions of people. The need to offer services that have a significant impact on those eligible (i.e. who are insured): on their health, by getting them to change their dietary habits, or on their activity, to develop the skills they may need to live with a pathology on a daily basis, to facilitate links with the administrative services, etc.
. In this context, digital tools make it possible to easily reach tens of millions of insured persons, everywhere and all the time, whenever they need specific information on health coverage, and to greatly simplify the links with the administration for most requests.
In France, the various branches of the social security system are developing new services, which can rely on digital support, to assist their insured persons beyond mere dossier management. This is why the Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse (CNAV) launched its VIVALab accelerator to support the development of innovative and effective services capable of meeting the needs of the elderly population it supports. eHealth tools make up a significant proportion of the solutions supported, with, at the end of the process, inclusion of the most effective ones in the service package offered to insured persons throughout France. This highly demanding programme has been a great success and has supported the development of eHealth solutions that now support tens of thousands of eligible persons and make a real difference in key areas such as mobility, home support and undernutrition, for which there were previously insufficient responses.
The Health branch has launched a Telehealth and Digital Innovation department to facilitate the nationwide dissemination of eHealth tools with a significant impact on insured persons and the health system. The aim is to extend the scope of digital technology to all areas relevant to the health of the insured.
For its part, the Autonomy branch, whose needs in terms of the population to be supported are on a par with the massive financial cost of successful prevention for this specific public, has long had the ambition of supporting the dissemination of cost-effective and highly practical solutions among the elderly. To this end, it is developing a trial centre to guide referencing and ensure that eHealth solutions are truly an oasis for the well-being of our elderly.
This important debate will provide an opportunity to discuss with representatives of all branches of the health and welfare system their vision for transforming eHealth into an oasis for citizens. An oasis that would also have the merit of transforming the health system so that it is able to respond to new challenges (demographic change, chronic pathologies).
