Being a top innovative economy means the various parts of society involved in innovative activities need to have a high enough level of trust that they can work together on investments with a greater risk of failure than those of an assembly line economy. Building that trust means understanding the incentives- what motivates and rewards people and entities for acting- of all players in innovation, and trying to align those incentives toward a common goal.

We are facing two challenges in the Czech Republic that may also be relevant for other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The first is related to the infrastructure for e-health and, more broadly, digitisation. This infrastructure has not been built yet, largely owing to implementation inefficiencies and capacity constraints at a national level. The second is the availability of health data for secondary use, such as research, measuring quality and safety, and understanding what is happening in the healthcare system.