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5. Community- and home-based care have lots of untapped potential. Covid19 has shown the
possible roles of community- and home-based care, although the trend had started even
before the pandemic. Not only can it free up hospital beds, and reduce spread of contagious
pathogens, patients also often show a preference for care in a familiar and comforting
environment. Combined with telemedicine, doctors can still have access to patients’ progress,
often aided by handheld monitoring and treatment devices. For older people in particular,
Keynote Sessions
home-based care, rather than institutionalized care, offers the opportunity to de-medicalize
ageing and to better balance the responsibilities of families and of societies/governments
vis-à-vis elderly people. Home-based and community-based care have the potential to
increase access to healthcare for vulnerable and difficult-to-reach populations, and decrease
unnecessary travel, hospitalization, and out-of-pocket expenditure. Health systems will have to
adapt to encourage this shift to potentially more cost-efficient and effective care, including
through changes in incentives and financing of care.

6. Data and technology will play an increasingly important role. The practice of medicine will
become increasingly virtual. Smartwatches, hand-held devices, sensors and other technology
can already now be used to track a person’s health, even from a distance, and it can be
expected that these capabilities will further expand. They will further enable telemedicine
and home-based care. Digital health is shifting the focus of health systems towards‘
client-centered healthcare. The availability of more health-related (aggregated) data will
be useful for epidemiological analyses, trend monitoring, cost-benefit analyses etc. Further
developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will likely move from currently translating patterns
from datasets (e.g., radiographic images) towards supporting health systems with
a personalized, data-driven and preventative approach. AI-enabled big data can help
accelerate drug discovery and patient management. Digital technology is expected to
transform healthcare infrastructure, from diagnosis and care to patient monitoring and drug
development. Nanotechnology has the potential of delivering treatments in specific body
parts, regenerating tissue, making diagnostics improvements and more, but it also raises ethical,
environmental, and regulatory questions.

7. Vigilance for new developments will be important. Newer fields in medicine will further
develop and may influence the thinking about health and health care. Examples are the role
that microplastics may play in our health, the importance of the microbiome, or new
approaches that might arise from further unravelling of the human genome (diagnosis,
prognosis and new therapies, including gene therapy). Additional issues may arise in the
future, such as further developments of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) – it is important that
vigilance and research are put in place to identify and better understand such issues.

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