The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way public health looks at data.Real-time dashboards, digital tracking, and instant information flows : these tools saved lives during the emergency, but today they must become a permanent part of healthcare systems.
This is the message of the new report “Digitalisation of Public Health” published by the OECD , which analyses how four countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – are transforming public healthcare through digitalisation.
According to the study, the challenge is no longer just technological but cultural and organizational: clear rules, widespread expertise, and citizen trust are needed.
The goal, writes the OECD, is to build “digitally enabled” systems that strengthen essential functions such as respiratory disease surveillance and vaccination registry management, but without leaving anyone behind.
Data governance and digital skills
The report highlights that all the countries analyzed are working on data stewardship models , true independent authorities responsible for ensuring common standards and the ethical use of health data.New Zealand and the United Kingdom have already implemented centralized governance models, while Australia stands out for having the only structured national training program for public health professionals , designed to address the digital skills gap.
The OECD invites countries to invest in digital health literacy programmes and to create stable incentives to retain specialised personnel, which is still in short supply today.
Cloud technology and interoperability
On the technological front, the direction is clear: cloud-first and interoperability.All four countries are adopting federated data architectures, based on secure and open cloud platforms, which enable real-time data collection and analysis.
The report cites the widespread use of international standards such as HL7 FHIR and SNOMED CT , which enable communication between different healthcare information systems.
However, fragmentation remains a barrier in federal countries like Canada and Australia, where digital skills and infrastructure vary significantly across regions.
Trust, participation and inclusion
Another pillar of the new digital public health model is co-creation with communities.The most advanced experiences, such as those of Canada and Australia, show how involving Indigenous peoples in managing their health data can strengthen trust and improve the quality of public policies.
“There is no digital transformation without social consensus,” underlines the document, which calls on governments to develop transparent communication campaigns to explain how data is collected and used, reducing the gap between risk perception and reality.
The public health of the future
For the OECD, the digitalisation of public healthcare is no longer an option, but an essential condition for the resilience of health systems.Governance, training, interoperability, and trust: these are the four pillars for building a healthcare system capable of preventing and responding to crises effectively, equitably, and sustainably.
The challenge now, the report concludes, is to transform emergency innovations into permanent public health tools. In other words: moving from digital healthcare "for Covid" to digital healthcare "for all." (Source: https://www.quotidianosanita.it /)