The Agency of the Presidency of the Republic, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador, is working to transform the national health system into a reality, moving from a curative model to a preventive one. This will allow the strengthening of the first level of health care and the removal of overcrowding in hospitals and centers of the public health network. In this context, digital transformation is key to achieving this goal.

At the launch ceremony of the Second International Health Workshop, Vice President of the Republic, Alfredo Porreiro Vega, stressed that the main objective of the entity he leads is to strengthen the national health system to ensure the right to universal and free health, but above all quality focused on those who need it most .

Telehealth is part of the hubs to achieve this. We want to take advantage of each of the successful cases that have been applied in the region to adapt it to our reality. “We have a series of challenges such as obtaining medical records and electronic prescriptions that will simplify care and make it a more comprehensive health system, where efficiency and honesty shine,” said the second president.

For his part, Gustavo Andres Calderon, Vice President of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, highlighted the efforts made by the Vice Presidency of the Republic in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Health and the Academy to include the national health system in the digital age, through this academic meeting. This seeks to develop innovative proposals to analyze the imminent challenges of the country’s healthy ecosystem.

The first international workshop called “Medical Informatics – Digital Health” was held on November 29-30, 2021, when challenges such as the implementation of digital health, prescriptions, electronic medical records, systems interoperability and data analytics, among others, were analyzed. It allowed the discussion to develop a roadmap to guide Ecuador towards the digital transformation of health.

This second international workshop on digital health, which will take place on Wednesday, April 20 and Thursday, April 21, 2022, at the facilities of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), brings together experts from Argentina, Spain, Guatemala and the United States. countries and Ecuador. They contribute from their expertise in telehealth and telemedicine.

It targets undergraduates, graduate students, health professionals, IT professionals and representatives of health-related companies. So far, 756 participants have participated in the conference in person and actually registered. This represents an increase of 57.7% of the registrants regarding the first edition of the workshop, which indicates interest in this type of academic activity.