By Nick Carney, F.Hoffmann-La Roche
A recent panel discussion at the DIA Europe 2021 virtual congress chaired by Meni Styliadou (Takeda, H2O Project Leader) titled “Laying the foundation for a value-based, patient-centered, and outcome-driven healthcare system in Europe” provided the opportunity to present the vision of IMI H2O and discuss in project the context of these healthcare system themes.
Professor Tanja Stamm (Medical University Wein, H2O Project Coordinator) represented the IMI H2O project, alongside Birgit Bauer – a digital health and social media expert and patient expert, person and editorial board member of Data Saves Lives who lives with Multiple Sclerosis, and Professor Christoph A. Meier – a pioneering clinician who brought value-based healthcare to Switzerland through implementation of PRO measurement programmes during his tenure as Chief Medical Officer at the Universitätsspital Basel.
The panel presented an opportunity to engage broadly on H2O and spread the good word about our work. Already in the planning stages H2O captured the imagination of the other panelists – paving the way for potential future collaboration!
After Meni set the scene, and teed up the conversation to tackle “how we can unblock” the transition to value-based healthcare, a lively and collaborative discussion followed that wove together the perspectives and expert view points from across healthcare, and touched themes central to H2O including health outcome measurement, patient engagement and empowerment, data governance and policy, and multi-stakeholder partnership.
While the uphill struggle in battling the lack of incentives for change and to measure patient-reported outcomes was highlighted by Christoph, we also heard clearly from Birgit that patients are willing to be data donors, but that we must work in close partnership to convey the value of outcomes measurement through provision of data feedback, and by ensuring we both “ask the right questions at the right time”, and that patients are “the owners of their own data”.
This provided the perfect foundation for Tanja to elaborate on the vision of H2O and how we hope to surmount some of these challenges – in particular through establishing the legal, ethical, and governance frameworks that enable patients to be guardians on their own health data, but also by setting the standards for measurement, data interoperability and outcomes transparency to “build trust in health data as a natural resource” for society. It was emphasised that the infrastructure for outcomes capture and feedback to patients we aim to build in H2O will empower and engage patients. Ultimately ensuring that their care focusses on what truly matters to them – and we hope will scale the work of innovators like Christoph to a pan-European level and beyond!
Meni wrapped up proceedings on a beautiful note, by asking each of the panelists to share one wish they would send in a letter to Professor Elizabeth Teisberg, who co-created the value-based healthcare concept back in 2006, that would turn the theory into reality. We hope through making H2O a success we can show Elizabeth some of her foundational principles in action and invite her into conversation with us too!
Nick Carney, PhD is Associate Global Scientific Director – Clinical Decision and Health Outcomes at F.Hoffmann-La Roche and member of H2O.
Universitätsspital Zürich , USZ: https://new.usz.ch/fachbereich/innere-medizin/team/
Data Saves Lives: https://datasaveslives.eu
Birgit Bauer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/birgitbauermanufaktur/
