Spain will make an investment of 850 million euros in digital health until 2026, Dr Juan Fernando Muñoz, Secretary General of Digital Health, Information and Innovation, announced to the Health Commission of the Congress of Deputies, as reported by Diariafarma (link in Spanish).
The investment will target collaborative projects with the the Ministry and local authorities. The projects in focus aim to develop interoperability systems between territories, improving access to health data. Dr Muñoz has described the current situation and that of the coming years as a “silver bullet or golden opportunity” to achieve, with the support of European funds, that Spain can undertake a “strategic transformation of the National Health System through the technology”.
Juan Fernando has presented to the Health Commission the amounts that the General State Budgets for 2023 have reserved for his department. Specifically, for next year allocation to digital health will be 224 million euros, of which just over 100 will be executed by the local authorities and 90 by the secretariat of the Ministry.
The investments will be directed to development of several projects already launched or committed (eg monitoring of pharmaceutical spending or the development of the vaccination registry and the promotion of new ones, with primary care data).
Dr Muñoz has recognized that Spain, in general terms “still has room for manoeuvre”, but that in comparative terms with the EU, Spain is in a “leadership situation” with respect to future European Health Data Space.