Across borders – Luxembourg is building the healthcare system of tomorrow
Published: Tuesday, Sep 17th 2024, 07:50
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Artificial intelligence and digital technologies: The healthcare sector is undergoing radical change. Luxembourg wants to work with partners in its neighboring countries Germany, France and Belgium to advance healthcare across borders.
"We see ourselves as a small European laboratory of healthcare systems," said the President of the Luxembourg Hospital Association FHL, Philippe Turk, in Strassen to the German news agency DPA.
The four different national systems that come together in this large region with around twelve million inhabitants face similar challenges: These ranged from the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday clinical practice to the development of increasingly personalized medicine with tailor-made therapies and the shortage of nursing staff and doctors.
At the beginning of October, healthcare experts from Europe will come together in Luxembourg for Healthcare Week Luxembourg to exchange ideas. "We don't have the ambition to transform the major national regulations in six months," said Turk, referring to the greater region. It's about ideas on how to initiate joint research projects, for example. Or launching international training courses for nursing staff: "With one year in Saarbrücken, one year in Nancy and one year in Liège," he said as an example.
Unique research project
"We really need to start working together across borders," said Ulf Nehrbass, Director of the Luxembourg Institute of Health. Most initiatives in research are still at a national level. "We are further ahead here in the region than in other European countries." Luxembourg is currently running a major project to network data rooms in the greater region.
This would involve collecting data from patients in the clinics in Reims, Nancy, Strasbourg, Saarbrücken, Freiburg im Breisgau and Basel on common diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. The data would be standardized so that it could be compared and used in the various centers. Using AI, it would then be possible to prescribe the best possible medication for patients on this basis.
The data project is unique in Europe, said Nehrbass. "It is a flagship project in the region, where we are actually tapping into the potential of precision medicine for the first time in Europe." Precision medicine is a form of personalized medicine that takes into account the fact that different factors can play a role in people with the same disease. The data is used to provide individualized treatment.
The "Clinnova" project should, if possible, also be extended to Rhineland-Palatinate and Belgium, said Nehrbass. It will also be applicable to other diseases. "And it will benefit patients and doctors."
Cooperation between clinics
So far, there has been "selective and non-systematized cooperation" between the hospitals in the greater region, said Turk. There is no network, no common structures for exchange. "I believe this is also a discussion that could be stimulated at Healthcare Week." The clinics should also have a say in the question of how specialists could possibly be trained together.
According to Nehrbass, it could make sense to place complex and expensive applications such as proton therapy for cancer in one location after coordination in the greater region. "All patients in the region could then benefit from this." A regional solution is also conceivable for cancer immunotherapy, i.e. T-cell therapy.
AI applications
High-tech and AI applications are already gaining ground in hospitals, said Turk. "They will move in everywhere. At the patient's bedside or as administrative aids for nurses and doctors when creating reports using natural language processing or AI for data collection." AI already exists, even if it is not yet being used systematically, said the internist. The aim is to make the work of specialists easier with these applications.
"There is a lot of potential for certain work steps to be taken over via applications," said Nehrbass. It's not that they want to save on nursing staff. "We don't have them." 66 percent of nursing staff in Luxembourg are cross-border commuters, half of whom come to work from France every day. The aim is to ensure good care for patients, even with fewer doctors.
Dopamine pump on the tooth
New digital technologies could also help with Parkinson's, said Nehrbass. There is a project in Luxembourg where patients can be cared for at home. A pedometer in their shoes monitors how they move. Dopamine can then be released via a pump attached to the tooth when the patient needs it. When Parkinson's patients lack dopamine, their steps become smaller and smaller.
The voice can also be measured with a digital module. "This enables us to use voice analysis on the phone to tell exactly how the patient is feeling."
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