On 10 November, President of Latvia Egils Levits had a remote meeting with Valts Ābols, Director of the Children’s Clinical Hospital (CCH), its ICT Department Head Iluta Riekstiņa and project manager Elīna Dimiņa. Meeting focused on children’s biomedical ecosystem development project. The key objective of the hospital’s digital transformation programme is to foster children’s healthcare by developing relevant services, enhanced research and participation of academia, and offering more diverse education opportunities and innovation support.
Project is part of efforts to develop personalised medicine based on integrated patient data flow and precision medicine. Project is part of the national effort encompassing all levels of paediatric care in Latvia.
As highlighted during the meeting, international cooperation, both at the individual and national level, is absolutely crucial. Child cancer is as equally complex as rare diseases. Early and precise diagnostics hinges upon capacity to benchmark data against sets compiled by hospitals in other countries. Open data and access to data, including participation in European cloud networks, is of high priority. International business experts are the vital link in this international cooperation.
Meeting between President Levits and President of Microsoft Brad Smith last December became the catalyst for this project. Project is expanding its ties with international and local businesses. Start-up collaborations are also bearing fruit. CCH has close relations with many Latvian universities and research institutes. Its strategic partners include, for example, Riga Stradiņš University and Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre.
President praised CCH team for the progress it has made in the past 12 months and underlined that CCH digital healthcare management system is the ‘gold standard’ for similar applications in other medical fields.