Organisational Governance
Change management
The digital transformation of health and care brings about changes in existing systems, structures and processes. Citizens and patients are also affected by these technological advancements, as they will require knowledge and skills in order to utilise the novel approaches and solutions to support the management of their health and wellbeing. This building block brings together models and mechanisms to understand and address the organisational, service, pathway, process, patient-care team aspects of a digital solution deployment.
Risk management
While the digital transformation can advance the quality and efficiency of health and care delivery, it also requires health and care organisations to identify and address any operational, legal and financial considerations and minimise risks and patient safety issues. The collection, use of, and sharing highly sensitive personal data, enabled by digital health technologies needs to be comply with data security and confidentiality regulations and local procedures to minimise risks from data theft, cyberattacks, unauthorised access, and privacy breaches. In order to limit the exposure to these risks, it is fundamental to identify organisational vulnerabilities as well as to establish and implement appropriate mitigation strategies, including workforce training and citizen/ patient awareness raising. This makes strong risk management an integral and obligatory part of organisational and information governance with associated liability and security policies. To support health and care organisations and industry stakeholders in the process, this DHE building block will provide good practice approaches to risk management in the digital transformation of the health and care sectors.
Organisational governance for quality of care
Effective organisational governance is crucial for high quality health and care services and patient safety. Health and care providers must have systems in place to continuously monitor and improve the service delivery in line with recognised standards, new evidence, and learning. This includes regularly collecting, monitoring and auditing health and care quality indicators, ensuring accountability, benchmarking against standards or other organisations, strong collaboration within and across settings, tailored training opportunities, as well as strategic decision-making and priority-setting. All of these components of continuous improvement are should be undertaken in the context of understanding ‘what matters to people’ and enursing aligning delivery of health and care services accordingly. This DHE building block highlights organisational governance approaches which ensure and drive improvements in the quality and safety of the health and care services provided.