What Does E-health Mean to You? Interview with Marcin Romanowski

Wondering if it’s easy to work in the e-health sector? Do you want to see the challenges and advantages faced by those managing teams creating solutions in the field of telemedicine? We invite you to read this interview with Marcin Romanowski, President of Comarch Healthcare, an experienced developer and manager who is not afraid of any challenges.

What does e-health mean to you?

Simply put, it means my everyday work in the e-health sector. :) Seriously, e-health is primarily about using the possibilities of modern technology to support medical staff and patients in throughout the healthcare process, from prevention to diagnosis, treatment and monitoring. It is also about the digitization of healthcare units, which significantly accelerates and increases the range of health services. 

In your opinion, what are the main directions of e-health development?

In Poland, the main directions of e-health development have already been established. For instance, they are defined in the recently published strategy of the e-health center. An increasingly important role will be played by the central P1 platform, which will be fed with data from emerging regional platforms, as well as from HIS-class (hospital information system) systems. Here, system providers and integrators such as Comarch play an important role. Thanks to this, access to data will be guaranteed for both medical staff and patients (via, for example, the IKP application). A significant role will also be played by artificial intelligence, within the framework of medical processes carried out by technology trained on the basis of data collected by algorithms. Of course, let us remember that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated the implementation of telemedicine in the field of remote patient monitoring, but these are the main directions of e-health development. 

What is the biggest difficulty when creating telemedicine solutions?

What may be surprising is the level of innovation. The medical market in particular is very sensitive to this. Behind each new medical device or diagnostic method, there must be evidence of effectiveness based on clinical trials that confirm the effectiveness of the solution. To this must be added a tedious and expensive certification process for medical devices, in accordance with EU directives. Finally, it is still necessary to overcome the wariness of doctors and medical staff towards such solutions. Nevertheless, this is a future from which there is no turning back. 

What I like the most about my job...

Working with people, especially those full of passion and commitment. Our industry gives a lot of reasons to be satisfied, especially when our products save the health and sometimes the lives of patients who use them.

What surprised you the most when you started working in the medical sector?

After 16 years in the financial sector, everything was a surprise for me. These are two different worlds that are hard to compare. Fortunately, I quickly managed to acclimatize in this new world, which, although now well-known, can sometimes surprise us all. :)

My professional goal for 2023 is...

Gaining another foreign market.