On December 13th, our Production Director and consultant David Moner was invited to participate in a panel discussion titled "Pioneering the change" at the TechSpirit Barcelona 2023 event.

He had the opportunity to share some ideas with his fellow panelists, Elena Santana from Naru Intelligence and Taryn Andersen from Impulse4Women, all moderated by Montse Daban from Biocat.

The main idea of the conversation revolved around the benefits that technology can bring to society, particularly focusing on the use and importance of shared information to accelerate change processes in environments such as healthcare.

According to David Moner, "Any new technology, such as the recent explosion of AI, can bring benefits if used correctly. But we should not apply it just because; it must have a reason for being, and we must evaluate what real benefit it will bring to society." He also adds, "We should not think of technology as magic. It is nothing more than algorithms that need to be built on a solid foundation to function correctly. In healthcare information, that foundation is having a correct formalization of data. Having information models and mechanisms that indicate the true meaning of that data. Only then can more advanced techniques be applied for data exploitation reliably."

All panelists agreed that sharing information is essential to make an exponential leap in the value of information. David explains this through the following reflection: "Many times we see companies treat healthcare information as if it were their particular treasure, thinking of the value of that data as a competitive advantage over other companies. However, this is a very limited view, and it also reinforces the lack of trust that citizens may have in giving up their data. This position is based on a mistaken premise, which is to consider data as the new gold. When the United States experienced the gold rush in the mid-19th century, it was necessary to compete to get your own gold mine because it was a valuable but finite element that had to be distributed among the first to obtain it. But when we talk about information, and especially health information, the value of data can multiply exponentially simply by sharing and combining them. Data interoperability, compared to a data island vision, provides us with unimaginable opportunities to improve our society, and particularly the health status of the population."

At Veratech, we promote this understanding of the use of healthcare information, helping to make sense of the data and creating a world of shared knowledge.

Read the Biocat news: «Artificial intelligence and healthcare data at Tech Spirit Barcelona 2023: where we are and where we’re heading»