E-health, an essential tool for preventative, personalised medicine
In the face of the limitations of a still-too-curative model, e-health is becoming an essential lever for building truly preventive and personalized medicine. Professor Antoine Piau highlights the key conditions for successfully achieving this scaling-up.
Professor Antoine Piau
The transformation of our health system cannot be based solely on increasing the number of health professionals – which is an unrealistic hypothesis in the short term. The real breakthrough will come from the transition from essentially curative medicine to a preventive, proactive and personalised approach that requires choices regarding funding, a rethink of how tasks are divided and delegated, and telehealth tools.
Remote monitoring: an essential step
We will never be able to implement truly personalised prevention – proactive precision medicine – without digital tools such as medical telemonitoring. These systems are no longer an option but a necessity if we want to meet public health needs without a five- or tenfold increase in the number of caregivers. The facts are simple: if we want to offer early care, without waiting for the patient to worry about a symptom (often belatedly) or visit the accident and emergency department, we must monitor large healthy populations, before disease presents itself, and this can only be done remotely.
Digital technology: a catalyst but not a substitute for human connection
France is bursting with areas of expertise: engineering, digital technology, medical research, clinical innovation. Yet we too often remain stuck at the stage of POCs (Proofs of Concept), pilot projects and Living Labs without really scaling up.
The real challenge in the coming years is clear: industrialise, implement and work together more effectively to bring these innovations to the regional and national levels. For example, teleconsultation has been shown to have economic and ecological benefits in some cases, and the challenge now is to ensure everyone can benefit regardless of age, location and ability to use new technology*
Digital technology: a catalyst but not a substitute for human connection
E-health should not be seen as an end in itself, but as an accelerator. There is no substitute for physical contact, in-person meetings, which build trust and help support those patients who have the greatest difficulty accessing the digital world. Without new professions whose role is to support the use of telehealth tools, without taking the digital divide into account, inequalities in care access will not be reduced but will instead become untenable.
In conclusion
E-health is not just a technological tool: it’s the cornerstone of a paradigm shift towards an approach to medicine that offers better, earlier treatment. It’s an opportunity that we must seize, collectively, by moving beyond the experimental phase, building a truly sustainable and effective model.