In the last one, Pedro Sánchez promised a sum of 223 million euros to implement technologies and artificial intelligence in health systems within the Health Tech Initiatives. This Thursday, Catalonia will become the first community to sign the agreement – in his case, 27 million – to begin implementing them, something that will foreseeably materialize at the beginning of next year.
The plan consists of a set of projects within the framework of collaboration between Red.es, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, which include the implementation of remote monitoring programs for the monitoring of chronic pathologies and the .
The agreement, which will be signed this Thursday by President Salvador Illa and Minister Óscar López, will be the first; The rest of the autonomous communities will follow in the coming weeks and months. All have started the administrative procedure, except Murcia and Madrid, according to government sources. They have until July 2026 to do so.
The Health Tech Initiatives are based on three lines of action. The first of them is the creation of a national diagnostic imaging network, which will allow them to be carried out in the country. This will facilitate remote access to medical images – they can be consulted from any community if the patient is not in theirs -, their use in research and the training of AI algorithms capable of improving diagnoses and clinical decision-making.
The second line will focus on the deployment of specific uses of AI, both in diagnosis and hospital management. Some examples of its applications are the optimization of waiting lists, the automatic planning of operating rooms, or the optimization in the management of quotas in family doctors: each one is assigned a number of patients, but the AI could identify the most demanding of the system (normally older people) to combine them with others who attend fewer consultations, and so that all doctors in the same health center have compensated agendas.
The project also aims to generalize the use of this technology in consultation. It can help doctors with or detect drug interactions. A program could identify from a long clinical history if a patient uses incompatible drugs, or warn that he or she has been using one for too long.
Investment in AI will also serve to support and identify risks in oncology or cardiovascular patients, taking advantage of the massive analysis of clinical data.
The third line is aimed at monitoring chronic patients through digital platforms that record their activity, vital signs and response to treatment, from home. Patients will be able to electronically send measurements – blood pressure, oxygen saturation, sugar… – and the system will alert healthcare teams for preventive intervention, with the aim of reducing hospital admissions and improving quality of life.
The project will be developed in collaboration with the autonomous communities: it will not be a transfer of funds, but rather a model of centralized management of resources and joint purchases to reduce costs.
