Digital Transition and New Technologies including digital services and clinical diagnosis

New technologies have the potential to improve the quality of healthcare, patient safety and the health of populations. Unisanté wishes to harness this potential, while ensuring that these technologies are rigorously assessed. We consider the clinical and environmental impact of the tools that we develop, as well as their safety and cost. The aim is for new technologies to be used safely, efficiently and responsibly, when they genuinely provide a health benefit.

Unisanté’s research activities have in particular enabled us to validate new diagnostic tests (for example, rapid antigen tests for COVID-19) and innovative treatments (for example, a dengue fever vaccine that does not stimulate the production of antibodies, but only cellular immunity) in the field.

Unisanté is also a dominant player in the digitization of primary medicine and public health in Switzerland. The institution’s existing knowledge and expertise enable it to develop new technologies that will shape the health system of the future, for example, using pragmatic field tools that will be able to improve the activity of healthcare professionals. Our researchers are working, for example, on simple decision support digital technologies intended both for healthcare professionals and the general public (e.g. to guide them with COVID-19 vaccines or colon cancer screening), or on the development of Swiss electronic patient records.

Finally, and given its mission to teach practicians in postgraduate training, Unisanté plans to develop educational research activities, particularly on the use of artificial intelligence and assessing its impact on clinical reasoning and managing uncertainty.