Open Dialogue in Medicine: Personnel, Technologies, and Opportunities in the New World
Countries need to share best practices to develop medicine
We need an efficient healthcare system to fight the pandemic. People all over the world feel the consequences of the pandemic. Sharing practices and cooperation could help sharing the experience. A robust healthcare system is an important right of every person and our main priority. The pandemic has shown that we could join our efforts and overcome this crisis thanks to innovation. Cooperation of countries and their citizens could help us all — Thet Khaing Win, Union Minister of Health of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
We cooperate with Asia Pacific and have student exchange programmes. We are open. This is why students from many countries come to us, and this number keeps growing every year. Medicine knows no borders: patients get sick all over the world. Every year we host a congress that brings together teachers, leading scientists and doctors from Russia and all over the world — Valentin Shumatov, Rector, Pacific State Medical University.
New challenges take new technologies
The pandemic affected the availability of medical assistance. We reallocated a lot of resources to fighting COVID. Nevertheless, we were able to manage the bed capacity and other resources in healthcare in a timely fashion by using digital technologies. We have used medical assistance algorithms, and going digital will help us in the future — Victor Fisenko, First Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation.
Medicine keeps developing, which makes focusing on modern technologies important. It needs to be done to make medical assistance available, while ensuring the efficient use of healthcare system resources — Valery Limarenko, Governor of Sakhalin Region.
Lack of qualified personnel. Poor availability
The main challenge is the lack of personnel, especially in remote areas. We train doctors and nurses, but we still lack personnel. We also experience problems with financing medical assistance. There is a law under development to protect the poorest and most vulnerable people. People need to have access to medical assistance, when they need it — Thet Khaing Win, Union Minister of Health of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
We did a review and identified two major problems according to our patients. One is late diagnoses. The other one is availability of medical assistance, especially in Russian regions. As for late diagnoses, we can say that today’s healthcare works with sick people. Basically, it is the treatment system. As for availability, on the one hand, medical facilities are overcrowded. On the other hand, they are remote — Alexander Tarnovsky, General Director, VSK.
Whatever is related to availability of medicine and healthcare is our major issue that needs to be addressed — Valery Limarenko, Governor of Sakhalin Region.
Data management. Promoting healthy lifestyles
We use lean production and data management. These are modern technologies that the global market uses, but usually in different areas. We got rid of registration desks in municipal clinics and launched the single control system. Then we saw that the number of appointments went up 30%. We monitor the load of inpatient units daily. If there are more requests for appointments than we can service, we provide appointments to doctors from inpatient units for municipal clinic patients. Basically, it means that we redistribute the personnel online — Valery Limarenko, Governor of Sakhalin Region.
I was surprised with the statistics that over 60% of Russians have a chronic disease. For example, 20 million people in Russia have cardiovascular diseases. The response to these challenges is clear: we need to promote preventive medicine, telemedicine, digital clinics, and healthy lifestyles — Alexander Tarnovsky, General Director, VSK.
We are already launching a pilot feedback programme. People see that the healthcare system responds to their expectations and complaints, which is great. Requests are processed online. The primary segment is the basis. Then it is preventive medicine — Victor Fisenko, First Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation.
Support for developing countries
I would like call for developed countries to make help for the developing ones their policy, to make it fair. At early stages of the pandemic, we tried to get the vaccines. We had the right to get them, but unfortunately, we got them late. As a result, a lot of people in our country died — Thet Khaing Win, Union Minister of Health of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
The material was prepared by the Russian news agency TASS