In a rugby stronghold like Castres, we know that success depends above all on collective strength. Traditionally, care in urban medicine was a solitary exercise. However, with the ageing of the population, the development of polypathologies, the increasing number of patients to be followed by each professional and the complexity of the cases, the system is becoming overwhelmed. It is increasingly difficult for single health-care professionals to effectively manage all the patients who call on them and who need increasingly complex and specialised care.
To be effective, treatment must now be collective, involving various health professionals: GPs, specialists, physiotherapists, nurses, speech therapists and dieticians. In this interdisciplinary approach, everyone has a role to play in the different stages of the treatment process: from initial treatment to secondary prevention.
This is reflected in the establishment of cooperation protocols and of health professionals in charge of coordinating care pathways. Digital tools are one of the major instruments that enable the deployment of such schemes. They are necessary for managing the pathways as well as for implementing cooperation protocols.
This major debate will be an opportunity to question, from a very practical point of view, the actual role of digital technology in the development of skill transfers through the experience of the CPTS Sud Toulousaine and its teams, with hospital institutions, namely the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Castres-Mazamet (CHIC) and the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) of Toulouse.
Looking beyond the current situation, this major debate will also be an opportunity for all the participants to imagine how this new type of collective practice could go further in serving patients, in particular by incorporating prevention on a large scale with the example of the WHO’s ICOPE programme and its involvement of community health and care workers.
