In this period in which we live and motivated by a reflection on how Health and Technology can be combined to make citizens of a city happier, this discussion and reflection was further developed in this webinar. How should the management of citizens’ life paths be monitored? Will it be a multidisciplinary effort and with several angles of analysis? How can we make people/citizens happier by using collaborative intelligence, increasing literacy and providing greater capacitation?
It was precisely on these very current and pressing topics that Altice Labs and V21 (Technology Incubation Center of Viseu) shared, on the 20th May 2020 at 11:30 am, the 3rd Moving Forward Webinar on “Health and Technology in a Happy & Smart City“, which included Almeida Henriques, Mayor of Viseu, Alcino Lavrador, General Manager of Altice Labs and Micaela Monteiro, Chief Medical Officer for Digital Transformation at CUF, as speakers and José Luís Biscaia, coordinator of the Family Health Unit of São Julião da Figueira, as moderator.
José Luís Biscaia started the session by asking the speakers how technology interferes with health, stating that technology is at the service of health, and expressed the wish to have the Internet of things (Iot) in health, to have time and space for people, as an increase in value and highlighted the challenge of including people, contributing to the reduction of inequalities.
Almeida Henriques began by characterizing the region of Viseu as a Happy & Smart City addressing the Municipality’s concern in promoting quality of life, with a focus on preventive health and encouraging a healthy lifestyle of the population, across all age groups, highlighting some measures implemented in schools, health units or homes, concluding that a Happy and Smart City cannot be dissociated from the health and technology sector.
For Alcino Lavrador “it is very important to define what it means to be happy and to be aware that human happiness depends on the quality of relationships, and these, on trust. This premise can be carried to the cities, because the happiest cities are the cities in which citizens and visitors trust their institutions and each other, as well as enjoying spaces that allow socialization. It is necessary to continue preparing the cities so that these moments of happiness and socialization are fostered and for this the use of technology is very important”. The general manager of Altice Labs also mentioned which technological solutions Altice Labs is working on to increase the efficiency of health care responses, highlighting MEDIGRAF and SMARTAL as base platforms from which many other products built with “lego” components are derived, such as natural language interaction, artificial intelligence, BigData, IoT, collaboration tools, etc.
Micaela Monteiro also defined technology as a tool to help obtain gains in health, and that can, for example, be used in monitoring so that people, as they lose their faculties, are able to remain at home, an environment where they feel at ease, safely and comfortably. It was also stressed that health literacy through digital media is very important so that people can make the right choices and reduce inequalities. An example of this is this time of confinement, in which the interest in teleconsultations increased exponentially, because both users and health professionals did not want to be exposed to risks and, therefore, teleconsultation was a widely used medium.
A dynamic moment of Q&A followed.
All speakers stressed that technology is as important in people’s lives as electricity and water, and therefore it is necessary to bring this means of communication and survival to more people as soon as possible so that we can have a completely digital country supported by equity in access and opportunities.
To close this webinar, José Couto, President of the Superior Council of Vissaium XXI – Association for the Development of Viseu, highlighted the need to make services more efficient and focused on the citizen, and that there should be transparency in the use of the stored data.