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October 20, 2019

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Digitization key to build a patient-centric health-care ecosystem in Shanghai

In the past decade, it’s been a great honour for Roche to witness, and play a role in, the amazing development of Shanghai as a key member of the International Business Leaders’ Advisory Council (IBLAC) for the Mayor of Shanghai. As Roche’s CEO, as well as an old friend of IBLAC, I have been attending the meeting for 10 years in a row and Roche has consolidated its expertise and global experience into a set of recommendations that best aligned with Shanghai’s development interests.

A decade ago, Roche focused on measures aimed at leveraging the pharmaceutical industry’s capacity to drive innovative economic growth and sustainably tackle health care challenges. Over recent years, Roche has also built digital innovation capabilities in life sciences and we are eager to support Shanghai’s ambition of becoming a smart city and a hub for technology innovation. Undoubtedly, the IBLAC has contributed a lot to the city’s economic growth and social progress, and being a part of this makes members like Roche so proud.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. As a reflection of China’s rapid development, Shanghai has been a trailblazer in adopting new policies in China. It is still a trailblazer today, especially in health care. The city is keen to adopt policies designed to promote digital health infrastructure and high-quality health-care services. New policies are introduced in Shanghai to increase the adoption of big data, AI, and new materials in health care, showing that the city is set to build a multifaceted infrastructure for the patient-centric digital health.

Today, digital technologies play an increasingly bigger role in traditional industries, and health care is shifting toward a patient-centric model across the globe. In alignment with the current global understanding of digital health care, Roche has developed its own pioneering insights, personalized health care. Meaningful data at scale offers rich information through advanced analytics, transforming into valuable outcomes to fuel the development of data-driven patient-centric health care.

As a committed partner, Roche is willing to share its industry expertise and international experience with the health care community in Shanghai and support its development. Therefore, Roche suggests that Shanghai focus on the following three areas to seize the emerging opportunities: 1) driving positive policy for health care data management; 2) building partnerships for stronger expertise; and 3) raising awareness for a better ecosystem.

Driving positive policy for health-care data management

Along with China’s national health-care initiatives, Shanghai has made great achievements in laying the groundwork for data-driven patient-centric digital health care. Roche believes that Shanghai could create guidelines for improving data management, data protection and data quality.

When seeking to improve data management, Shanghai can use the FAIR Data Principles for guidance to set goals. Jointly developed by experts around the world, these principles were used by the European Union to guide data management for its Horizon 2020 initiative and European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative. Unlike other data principles, the FAIR Data Principles focus on how to better manage data and how to make it easier to find and process data.

Meanwhile, Shanghai can also create a policy framework to improve data security and protect patient privacy. It’s important to build public trust in data security too. This can be done by educating the public about how the policy for data protection is able to ensure data security.

Building partnerships for stronger expertise

Today, digital technologies can be used to support medical researches, clinical decision-making, non-clinical services, and decision-making in government. Various stakeholders in Shanghai have launched initiatives leveraging digital technologies to promote data-driven, patient-centric health care.

Shanghai can further build partnerships to maximise the use of digital technologies and medical data, and strive to create a patient-centric health-care ecosystem innovatively.

First, Shanghai can leverage technologies and data to pursue precise R&D focusing on the personalized needs of patients. The city’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is home to many leading pharmaceutical companies including Roche with abundant professionals and resources for patient-centric pharmaceutical research.

Second, Shanghai can leverage digital technologies to improve patient care in hospitals. Digital technologies, including AI, can foster the development of the clinical decision support systems (CDSS), which use advanced analytics to transform large volumes of data into actionable insights, and can provide support for caregivers as they navigate the increasing complexity of medical data.

Third, Shanghai can leverage real-world data (RWD) to innovate with policy making and increase access to novel therapies. The China Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) has come up with a preliminary guiding principle for scenarios where real-world evidence (RWE) derived from the analysis of RWD can be used to support drug development and regulation. Shanghai is well-positioned to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of using RWD in policy-making.

Raising awareness for a better ecosystem

Ultimately, most health-care decisions still stem from the interaction between service providers and patients. By launching several initiatives, Shanghai will be able to improve collaboration across the service provider-patient spectrum. For example, incentives such as financial reimbursement or a reward for improved workflow, for the time saved or for improved patient outcomes can be provided for the adoption of patient-centric health care. Offline efforts such as distributing promotional pamphlets will work as well. Shanghai can also consider hosting panel discussions, bringing together Chinese and foreign key opinion leaders (KOLs) to share their insights and expertise.

Also, Shanghai can make a conscious decision to include the feedback and viewpoints of patients in future policymaking and ensure that patient representation is part of discussions involving multiple stakeholders. Patients can also take control of their own data using the new digital tools such as wearable devices. To achieve this goal, Shanghai can further beef up its public education efforts by partnering with other stakeholders, including academics as well as leading companies and hospitals.

At this critical moment in the transformation of health care through digital technologies, Shanghai has an exciting opportunity to advance its pioneering role in this area by creating a data-driven, patient-centric health-care ecosystem, to exceed expectations and establish itself as a biomedical innovation hub. Roche is willing to support Shanghai’s ambition to build an advanced data-driven health-care ecosystem by launching more innovative therapies and devices in the city. Let’s work together to make it happen.




 

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