Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The aim of the present study is to consider a range of problems that are to be solved during the implementation of projects that are aimed at increasing the access to healthcare and based on the achievements of the new technological order on the example of Latvia, primarily the e-health project. Since January 1, 2018, the use of the e-health system in Latvia is mandatory, but so far only the “Digital Prescription (e-prescription)” project has been functioning at full capacity. The experience with the introduction and use of digital medicine in Latvia indicates a large range of problems faced by state institutions and local self-government institutions, medical establishments, medical personnel, and patients. A systematic vision of the problems of implementing digital medicine requires a necessity at least to take into account and solve seven relatively independent tasks: technical and technological, economic, legal, organizational, managerial, social, psychological, and cultural ones. In terms of systemic vision, the assessment of these aspects of the e-health programme implementation is presented by means of an extensive use of data retrieved from international organizations, Latvian state statistics, scientific research studies, including the ones carried out by the authors. The main conclusion of the study is the need for the theory and the practice of the increasing access to healthcare based on digital medicine, taking into account a more complete variety of factors that stimulate and constrain this process, and involving specialists from the sphere of social sciences.

The article presents the basic principles of access to health care from the perspective of economics. Accessibility to health care implies adequate health expenditures and is based on the principle of equity. Based on a statistical analysis of international survey data, the article provides a comparative assessment of the accessibility to health care in Latvia, offers realistic solutions to one of the most pressing problems to improve the quality of life of the population. The results of the original studies carried out by research teams from Lithuania and other countries are widely used. The accessibility to health care is determined by two areas of a positive development of a country – economic growth and institutional maturity synthesized by social justice. In other words, the population’s greater access to health care-related services can and should be achieved not only by increasing the labour productivity of the employed through the introduction of new technologies and other components of economic growth, but also by adjusting higher-quality state and non-state institutions, their effective interaction in order to achieve economic growth and quality of life of the population.

The article sums up some results of the studies devoted to the socialization of the economy in the aspect of the reduction of threats to national security. The following research objectives were defined by the authors: an attempt to estimate the role of such functions of social economy as concern for public health, reduction of social and economic inequality, increase of social cohesion and trust that is most fully reflected in the phenomenon of social capital. A special place is given to the assessment of the manifested implementation of socialization of economy on the examples of Latvia and Ukraine. As arguments, the authors use both their own empirical studies and the data of national and international analytical and statistical institutions. The carried out analysis provides a clearer vision of the model of strengthening the socialization of economy in the aspect of ensuring national security with emphasis on economic security. Weak realization of the socialization of economy inevitably leads to an increase in social-economic inequality of population, when along with economic inequality other components of aggregate capital can serve the main catalyst for this negative process. For different countries at different times these components of aggregate capital are very specific. In some cases, the dominant threat is health capital, in others – the human (vocational and educational) capital. The proposed model reflects both the theory of aggregate capital as a methodology for analysis of the interconnection between social economy and security and the role of social capital as an important indicator of inequality, and, at the same time, the most important indicator of stability and security.