Smart Healthcare System: A Prerequisite for the Optimal Implementation of the Referral System and Family Physician Program

Over the past decades, Iran’s health system has faced challenges such as rising costs, inequities in access, imbalances in the quality of health services, weak data management, and the lack of integration among diverse information systems. The implementation of the referral system and the family physician program, considered the main strategy for reforms and achieving universal health coverage, has encountered difficulties in urban and metropolitan areas. These difficulties include inadequate continuity and coordination of care, limitations in recording and tracking patient histories, resistance from some service providers, and an underdeveloped information infrastructure. International experiences demonstrate that the development of smart healthcare systems through technologies such as electronic health records, telehealth and telemedicine, mobile health (M-health), the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and decision-support systems can enhance need-based access, equity, efficiency, and patient satisfaction, while reducing costs. For Iran, a comprehensive leap toward digital health is imperative by establishing a dedicated organizational structure for smartification, ensuring people-centered platforms, developing a national data exchange infrastructure, harnessing the domestic innovation ecosystem, and expanding telehealth, telemedicine, and the Internet of Medical Things. Such a smart healthcare system, by optimizing human and financial resources, strengthening the referral system and family physician program, and revitalizing the healthcare network, can address existing challenges and effectively achieve universal health coverage.