From AI to robotics: why technologies can make the NHS more sustainable

Robotics in the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered trauma and ischaemia, digital therapies to improve patients' lifestyles and prevention, especially in the over-65s, wearable medical devices that measure the most important parameters, and finally telemedicine to shorten the distance with patients, but above all artificial intelligence that can help doctors and healthcare personnel not only in clinical activities, but also in planning and management. These are the most disruptive technologies that, if used well, can become valuable allies in making the health service more sustainable as it grapples more and more each day with an ever-increasing demand for health and insufficient resources. This is one of the topics at the centre of the new edition of Exposanità, the trade fair that for over 40 years has been the reference point for the world of healthcare and the socio-healthcare sector, and that these days brings together in Bologna thousands of professionals, experts and companies.

Among the first obstacles facing our National Health Service is certainly the structural lack of funds. With the 3.1% deficit on GDP just certified by the European Union, it will be difficult to imagine significant funding for healthcare already in the next budget manoeuvre. The Councillor for Health Policies of Emilia Romagna, Massimo Fabi, who attended the inaugural conference of Exposanità, tried to respond to this: 'There is no single solution. The first choice is cultural and political: invest in health promotion and prevention. Prevention is better than cure, it saves lives and makes the system more sustainable. Then there is the concrete strengthening of territorial healthcare. Emilia-Romagna is among the benchmark regions on the objectives of Mission 6 of the PNRR: we will go from 140 to 192 Community Homes, with 600 more beds in Community Hospitals, investments in innovative technologies and digitalisation. Today, 92% of citizens adhere to the Electronic Health Record,' explains Fabi, who in addition to being a rheumatology doctor has long managerial experience as General Director of the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma.

Another central theme of Exposanità2026 - as of all the previous editions of the exhibition - is that of human resources, which literally hold up our Health Service. For Nino Cartabellotta, president of the Gimbe Foundation, also present in Bologna, 'the National Health Service is today faced with three main criticalities. The first is precisely funding: in recent years there has been a significant gap compared to the European average, with around 700 euros less in public spending per capita, which translates into more than 40 billion in total. The second concerns inequalities, which are no longer just territorial between North and South, but increasingly transversal: between urban and peripheral areas, between different socio-economic and generational conditions. This is reflected in a worrying fact: millions of people give up on treatment. The third critical issue is personnel. It is not so much the number of doctors that is lacking, but the ability of the public system to retain them, due to poor attractiveness and difficult working conditions'. Concerns that were shared by the president of the Order of Nursing Professions (Fnopi) Barbara Mangiacavalli who called for "courage and vision" in building careers with more responsibility for nurses, who will now also be able to train with the new specialist degrees, as well as the president of the Order of Physiotherapists (Fnofi) Piero Ferrante who called for the promotion of skills and staff training in the use of new technologies

As already mentioned, technology is the great protagonist of the 200 conferences and workshops taking place at the 24th edition of this Exposanità exhibition (BolognaFiere from 22 to 24 May), which is more than 40 years old and whose pavilions will also display many new technological applications and solutions for patients proposed by the approximately 400 companies involved. From Artificial Intelligence applied to assisted diagnosis, personalised medicine and predictive analytics, through telemedicine solutions that reduce territorial distances, to the new generation of wearable diagnostic devices, digital innovation is increasingly tracing the path for the healthcare of the future, offering solutions - 'Planning Solutions', as the claim of this edition goes - that have the task of responding to a great challenge: will digital technology save health as a universal right not only in clinical activity but also in the management and organisation of our healthcare? In Bologna in these days the first answers.