Every year since 2012, I have enjoyed participating in Doctors2.0 & You, I learned a lot at these meetings. The new “conference in a conference” format allows us to mobilize differently the #doctors20 community and to adapt itself to the development of digital in healthcare

A guest blogpost by Franck Schneider @fksc_ , head of digital communication at Geneva University Hospitals.

Economic constraints are always important in healthcare systems. Reverse innovation opens the prospect of new financially sustainable progress. The program of FAMx Paris conference (31 May – 1 June at UNESCO) gives us the opportunity to discover these frugal innovations with the hope that better care and lower costs will not contradict one another. By giving a voice to healthcare professionals and researchers in emerging countries, it is also aparticipatory culture that FAMx Paris contributes to help healthcare systems progress.

Within a community, each contribution matters

The changing role of healthcare professionals is one of the three major challenges put forward by the conference. It is probably by advancing participatory culture that healthcare systems can better integrate the upheavals induced by new technologies. Jenkins (2009) describes several key elements needed to create a strong participatory culture. Low barriers to entry and strong culture are needed to create and share. In a community, members have to believe that their contributions matter and to feel some degree of social connection with one another. Taking into account the innovations produced by professionals and patients of emerging countries contributes to develop this strong culture of sharing.

In Dakar, Paris or Jaipur, internet and smartphones have seen similar developments in just a few years. The opportunities offered by these tools are still widely underused. Healthcare professionals have to take into account rapidly changing uses. Patients find it difficult to understand why so many activities of  everyday life that are integrated  in the digital transformation change so slowly in healthcare institutions. These evolutions are complicated to implement and  experiences from elsewhere help us better understand  digital transformation. The innovations that will be presented at FAMxParis will allow us to take a fresh look at issues that we cannot yet solve.

A different perspective on digital transformation

Let’s take the example of Khushi Baby. It is a connected necklace, developed by an Indian team, that facilitates the follow-up of  maternity and the infant. This project was recently presented at the last Geneva Health Forum. It shows us an approach to electronic medical records that is very different from the one  we know. Khushi Baby is probably not transferrable to the context of healthcare systems in Europe. But we can take a different look at  connected objects and the electronic medical record after listening to Mohammad Shahnawaz tell us the story of this project.

I am impatient to discover the projects that will be presented at FAMx Paris. This conference will be the opportunity to develop this participative culture which we so  need in  healthcare to address the challenges of digital transformation.