DIAGNOSE CAFE: 4 Countries 2 Ministers 0 Reply

Fabulous session about the future of Health, Telemedicine, Virtual and Real care, how to use technology and how to educate people to deal with the computer power and minimize isolation or ‘clinical exclusion’ due to massive cuts in healthcare budgets. Amsterdam, Lisbon, London and Ramallah joined the discussion between students, doctors, Health and AT experts. In Ramallah the Palestinian Minister of Health, Dr Hani Abdeen, gave an extraordinary testimony of palestinian reality and posed some relevant questions about the limits of Telemedicine. On his side was Professor Sabri Saidam, the co-founder of Dialogue Cafe in Ramallah, and Dr Haitham Al-Hassan, neurosurgeon who already used DC once to meet american peers to validate his complex surgery options to save the life of a young children.

The access to care is crucial to all countries and people, regardless the latitudes, and a lot of innovation is bringing people together, closer to better solutions. All the participants agreed that we have to combine several approaches, without loosing the human touch and face-to-face relation between doctors and patients. All the discussion started from the initial presentation of a new project of a portuguese team who’s building a Virtual Hospital in Portugal, linked to other virtual hospitals around the world. In Lisbon Ana Brasileiro, Dermatologist, co-founder of this project shared her experience in the field and her exchanges with peers. She mentioned the dutch KSYOS team and projects, that she met and inspired her a lot.

Dr. Safa Nasser Eldin, Minister of Telecom and IT, joined the discussion and showed her interest in DC to amplify the best practices in all areas of expertise. The presence of both palestinian ministers was important to engage politicians in vital fields such as continuity of care and personalized (tele)medecine.

In the Hub of Westminster, Luís Fernandes presented the project he’s co-founding with Ana Brasileiro, and explained ‘why now?’ and ‘with what aims?’. He reinforced the idea that nowadays most of the people use smartphones, mobile phones, computers and the net, and all of this ‘stuff’ leads us to a new era where people can rely more on technology clinical components concerning diagnosis process. In London a Macedonian participant added some questions and remarks, and in the end of this session, Sacha van Tongeren, the dutch co-hoster of this Health 2.0 meeting asked all participants to program some DIAGNOSE CAFE sessions. Done.