Governance Principle
Capacity Building
Capacity building is the process of equipping all stakeholders, from regulators to patients, with the tools and expertise necessary to understand, evaluate, and effectively participate in the development, implementation, and governance of digital health technologies.
Why is it important?
-
Shared language: Creates a common understanding which facilitates effective collaboration.
-
Expands expertise: Ensures stakeholders can keep pace with rapid technological change.
-
Ethical Innovation: Promotes the responsible development and use of new technologies.
How to make it happen?
To diffuse the necessary skills to advance responsible digital health innovation in Switzerland, policymakers and decision-makers should:
Consider trainings to promote digital literacy for citizens, patients and doctors.
This capacity building would help promote...
Action 7
Promote ethical awareness
Why promote ethical awareness?
Limited ethical awareness among stakeholders can lead to value conflicts, competing interests, and unintended negative consequences, such as privacy breaches, algorithmic biases, limited explainability, and reduced patient autonomy.
Cultivating ethical awareness involves developing a solid grasp on how digital technologies work and their implementation contexts. With such understanding, healthcare professionals, patients, regulators, and innovators can proactively identify and mitigate ethical risks, make informed decisions, and build trust within the healthcare ecosystem.
What needs to be done?
To foster ethical awareness, policymakers should do the following:
Disseminate information
Policymakers should encourage regulators, innovators, and healthcare providers to disseminate important technical information and ethical considerations related to digital health technologies and their use.
Promote best practices
Policymakers should promote best practices for innovators to address ethics in digital health innovation and incentivise innovator adherence in the regulatory approval process.
Fund research
Funders should support research on digital health ethics and innovation practices to help stakeholders address emerging concerns.
Train staff
Medical schools and health centres should offer training to recognise and address ethical concerns in digital health.
By promoting a shared understanding of the ethical issues and context sensitivity, Switzerland can ensure the responsible development and deployment of digital health technologies.
Action 8
Foster regulatory knowledge
Why foster regulatory knowledge and skills?
AI and ML also hold promise to help with regulatory processes. Machine learning and Large Language Models, for instance, can speed up and improve the accuracy of document processing, whilst also providing new insights. Regulators should thus take a proactive role in the creation and application of new tools aimed at enhancing regulatory procedures.
What needs to be done?
To promote regulatory knowledge among digital health stakeholders, the following actions should be implemented:
Provide funds
Policymakers should ensure regulators are informed about current trends in product development, regulatory science, and regulatory affairs.
Share knowledge
Regulators should be well informed about current trends and best practices for digital product development, regulatory science, and international regulatory affairs.
Use new tools
Policymakers should support regulators in considering the opportunities offered by supervisory (SupTech) and regulatory (RegTech) technologies to streamline regulatory processes.
Strengthen skills
Regulators and funding bodies should incentivise and support digital health stakeholders in acquiring the skills for effective collaboration with regard to new regulatory technologies.