About RLS-Digital Health

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 the Regional Leaders Summit (RLS) created a targeted research group on digital health, the „RLS-Digital Health Initiative”. This initiative is committed to advancing knowledge and promoting translational research in the field of digitalization and artificial intelligence applied to medicine and healthcare.

The “RLS-Digital Health Initiative” will benefit from the multidimensional diversity of the RLS regions and work towards establishing a unique research network that addresses a wide spectrum of research topics in digital health. Within a dedicated research and development framework the “RLS-Digital Health Initiative” will facilitate research projects in digital health that leverage the synergistic potential of multiregional collaborations in this field. The “RLS-Digital Health Initiative” group will extend the scientific exchange, matchmaking and professional networking in the existing RLS-Sciences network. It will further continuously advance, develop, and monitor the joint strategic roadmap that guides their work.

Aiming at bridging the gap between research and application in digital health, the “RLS-Digital Health Initiative” will offer activities and projects covering both methodological pillars and clinical use-cases in digital health:

Methodological pillars:
- Data Handling and Ethics
- Digital Medical Applications
- Big Data in Public Health

Clinical use-cases:
- Demographics and the ageing society
- Surgery and robotics
- Oncology and cancer prevention
- Rare diseases/neurodegenerative diseases

Thus, the “RLS-Digital Health Initiative” wants to practice multilateral collaboration within the RLS regions as a means to better explore and jointly take advantage of the transformative potential that digital health brings to our societies.

The first dedicated workshop of the RLS-Digital Health Initiative was held in November 2021. Find the program here.

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