Can Value-based healthcare be implemented in Europe? – How personalised medicine and patient outcomes can help

What if we could determine a baby’s risk of cancer or Alzheimer’s disease later in life, by studying their DNA? And what if we could print at home the drug to treat a specific disorder? It might look a bit like science fiction right now, but it’s what personalised medicine could achieve in the coming years.

The new era of targeted treatment could lead to finer diagnoses, tailored medical prescriptions, custom-made disease monitoring and reduced care costs. What can hospitals start doing today to bring it closer to reality? How can research centres and universities help?

A great deal of personalised medicine’s success depends on our ability to retrieve and share patient data, in particular from medical monitoring devices but also satisfaction surveys. Two words to describe this approach: Patient outcomes.

Using these records, organisations such as the WHO and the OECD, in cooperation with the European Commission, develop comparisons across countries on who gets the best value for money, and who the best outcomes.

Now, back to reality in 2018: how to collect this data, compare (real) performances across health systems and take a step forward toward personalised medicine – and enter the next era of health care systems?

But the accompanying challenge for European member states with universal healthcare coverage is how to find value with limited financial resources; how to make public health systems sustainable.

So, delving deeper into the future of health, value-based healthcare  is a challenging question. If health systems became “value-based”, care providers would be paid based on patient health outcomes. This means that hospitals and physicians are rewarded for helping patients improve their health, reduce the effects of chronic diseases and help patients live healthier lives.

Personalised medicine and value-based healthcare are closely connected concerns and the use of patient outcomes is crucial to the development of the value-based approach: In order to know whether a drug is effective, what better way to monitor patients’ recovery than by collecting their opinions?

Besides, the value-based approach would give incentives to companies to develop personalised medicine solutions such as tailored drugs, diet and exercise outcomes monitoring and telemedicine services - improving disease prevention and earning lots of healthy years for the whole population.

Barcelona is among the trailblazers in the healthcare revolution, being home to the third most powerful supercomputer in Europe: the MareNostrum 4, hosted by Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. Machines like the MareNostrum 4 are essential to achieve personalised medicine as they are capable of analysing large amounts of data, such as medical records, imagery, genomic and rare diseases traces – helping biomedicine advance to the next level.

This event will be a unique opportunity for a high-level debate on value-based health care, personalised medicine and patient outcomes in Barcelona, which are still matters under discussion in Spain. 

Science|Business will organise a conference on 19 September 2018 at the Hospital St. Joan de Déu, Barcelona, to elevate the issue of value-based healthcare.

The conference will take place in english, however, spanish translation will be available.

• Co-organised with the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and Hospital St. Joan de Déu, members of the Healthy Measures initiative, and supported by the Col•legi de Metges de Barcelona.