I have pondered the news that a European headquarters for digital innovations in healthcare is being established in Croatia. I have no doubt about the quality of the project from the ‘Ruđer Bošković’ Institute, which received a high score of 14 out of 15 possible points from the European Commission. However, Croatia is a country of paradoxes, particularly evident in healthcare. We have top-notch medical achievements, but overall catastrophic healthcare. Thus, digitalization also has two faces. One is the project with Ruđer ‘Artificial Intelligence for Smart Healthcare and Medicine’ (‘Al4health.Cro’) under the ‘Digital Europe’ program, which is expected to have a budget of three million euros over three years.
But Croatia also has other healthcare digital ‘projects’. Here are some current ones:
• The development of the CijepiSe platform, full of errors, on which citizens registered for vaccination, was awarded to a company whose owner is connected to the Minister of Health.
• The job of developing the IT system e-Hospitals was entrusted to a company that had previously primarily dealt with creating floral arrangements.
• Digitalization is when a doctor in a health center sends you from the third floor to the first floor to register for an ultrasound examination, and the first appointment is in February. Along the way, you find out that the doctor could have registered you for an examination at any health center, you return to the third floor, and then a free appointment is found – at the beginning of September in Zagreb’s Peščenica or in Sesvete already in a week.
• Digitalization is when your doctor, who prefers to communicate via email, goes on vacation without leaving a message that they are out of office with instructions on whom to contact. • Digitalization is when no one answers the phone in the office for hours.
• A higher phase of digitalization is when you can’t even come to the office because the doctor requires phone orders, but no one answers the calls.
I do not mention these digitalizers in the Croatian way to diminish the importance of ‘Al4health.Cro’, but precisely to show how projects like this are necessary for Croatian healthcare, which sees artificial intelligence ‘as key to the advancement of healthcare and as a catalyst for leading Europe to a healthier future’. However, this is not only supported by the IRB but also by a public-private consortium that brings together partners from the private and public sectors, from technology companies, innovation centers, entrepreneurs, health centers to clinics and – decision-makers. These include the Ministry of Health, HZJZ, and HZZO.
It should be noted that these institutions are precisely responsible for the current level of digitalization, as well as for the grotesque examples I have mentioned. Because of them, the healthcare sector stumbles between top achievements in, for example, transplantation and dubious sales of human organs. Thus, digital innovations will only succeed if the project breaks the ossified parts of the healthcare system. Or, to be a bit cynical – artificial intelligence in healthcare is indeed necessary when we do not have enough natural intelligence.
