THE ROLE OF TELEMEDICINE AND DIGITALIZATION IN THE PARADIGM SHIFT OF MEDICAL SERVICES IN ROMANIA

The article outlines the role of telemedicine within the entire medical services in Romania, and aims to highlight the benefits and limitations of this type of interaction, its current market size, its growth potential and the top ten private players involved. In order to achieve the goals set in the European Digital Strategy 2030, Romania must continue to adopt measures that include raising public awareness of the benefits involved by telemedicine, the support of large-scale projects that may test and evaluate telemedicine, as well as legislative acts to eliminate the barriers against the use of telemedicine. As digital medicine gains importance, several paradigms involving the doctor-patient interaction, prophylaxis, healthy human medicine, and the family doctors will also change. Both qualitative and quantitative data has been analysed in the research process. The former includes articles and surveys published by the specialist press.The quantitative data has been taken from reports published by the European Commission or by the World Health Organisation. With regard to the concept of „personalized medicine” and to the National Health Strategy 2021-2027, the author has consulted the State of Innovation 2020 report, elaborated by the Centre for Innovation in Medicine.