From environmental sanitation to robotics, from operator training to artificial intelligence: personal services are the invisible fabric that supports care, improves quality of life, and drives the evolution of healthcare.

Within the multifaceted Services Industry, an important segment is represented by what are commonly referred to as “Personal Services.” These comprise a broad range of professional activities aimed directly at promoting well-being, care, assistance, education, and an improved quality of life. It is a very broad spectrum of activities addressing very different situations, as we will see later, and responding precisely to specific, clearly defined needs. From health and care services to family and domestic services, from education and training to beauty and personal care services, and from cultural to recreational services, these activities complement what each of us produces on a daily and individual basis to improve and extend our lives.

To get an idea of how much the contribution of services has improved our longevity, it is worth noting that 100 years ago, in 1925, life expectancy in Italy, averaging men and women, was 55 years; today it is 84 years.

“In one century, we have extended the span of our lives by 30 years.”

In one century, we have extended the span of our lives by 30 years. One might call it a miracle. Yet the most significant contribution to this extraordinary extension of our lifespan has undoubtedly come from personal care and assistance services, healthcare services, cleaning services, and education and training activities, which first created greater awareness and then a stronger sense of responsibility.

Improved hygiene conditions and access to drinking water, safer food, vaccinations, antibiotics, advances in diagnostics and medicine, and the practice of cleaning and sanitizing environments. From the large family of services, let us focus on those related to healthcare: preventive and curative medicine, community-based care, telemedicine and remote diagnostics, hospital cleaning, contamination control, and the organization of all relevant information.

This network of activities ranges from simple actions such as handwashing—which can reduce gastrointestinal infections by up to 50% and healthcare-associated infections by up to 40%—to more complex interventions involving advanced technologies, from artificial intelligence and robotics to big data processing.

Among the activities developed in recent years in the search for more effective approaches to care and assistance, some deserve particular attention. We have learned, for example, that environmental sanitation services in hospitals and other healthcare facilities can drastically reduce the incidence of HAIs (healthcare-associated infections). A study by the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) estimated that 5.7% of patients acquire an HAI and that, every year, more than 4 million patients in Europe become infected, resulting in over 37,000 deaths.

“The importance of sanitation in preventing hospitals from becoming places of infection and disease rather than places of care.”

Hospitals intended to be places of care can become places of infection and disease. It has been demonstrated that each case of infection results in an average extension of hospital stay of 15 days and an increase in costs ranging from €5,000 to €50,000 per patient. The WHO (World Health Organization) reports that, for every 100 hospitalized patients worldwide, 7 patients in high-income countries and 15 in low-income countries acquire at least one infection during their hospital stay. Rates can reach 30% in intensive care units.

Further confirmation of the crucial role of cleaning and sanitation came during the COVID period, when greater attention to hygiene precautions led to a significant reduction in infection and transmission figures. Cleaning services, therefore—the most basic and least complex services to provide—produced excellent results. Let us therefore look to the future and to emerging technologies with enthusiasm and hope, without forgetting to address our most fundamental needs, first and foremost the creation of optimal hygienic conditions.

“Personal services require recognized professionalism: properly trained and continuously updated skills, together with remuneration commensurate with the value of the work performed.”

I said at the outset that personal services are a set of professional activities and, as such, require at least two essential conditions: professional services must be adequately remunerated, and the expertise involved must be the result of an appropriate professional training path that is continuously updated.

Representative organizations are all moving in this direction. The “near future” holds exciting challenges and remarkable achievements. Advanced hospital and pharmaceutical logistics will enable us to manage complex procurement processes involving thousands of variables with accuracy and security. Artificial intelligence will help us communicate with aphasic patients or those with severe cognitive impairments; it will allow us to process enormous volumes of data in real time, classify them, and cross-reference them with other sources. We will be able to determine the incidence, recurrence, relapse, and reinfection rates of various diseases around the world, as well as track the successes of experimental therapies, innovative surgical procedures, and cases of complete recovery monitored across the globe and collected in databases accessible to the scientific community.

Robotics will enable us to assist patients in a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state. Exoskeletons will help healthcare professionals lift and move patients, perform neurological rehabilitation, and support the recovery of mobility in paraplegic patients. Wearable sensors will then enable us to remotely monitor the vital signs of large numbers of patients, prevent the risk of falls, monitor sleep patterns, and detect clinical deterioration. Other stationary sensors, meanwhile, will be able to monitor environmental health and air quality.

Some argue that caring does not simply mean curing a disease; it also means accompanying, listening, rehabilitating, and providing care. This is indeed the case. It also means designing a hospital, a nursing home, or any residential healthcare facility by considering all the services that will need to be delivered there as effectively and efficiently as possible, never forgetting that care reaches the patient precisely through these services.

We can never thank enough the hundreds of thousands of professionals who, through their expertise, make our lives better every day, around the clock. A new theory gaining ground in design culture is that of integrated design: the idea that services should be designed together with the building, the property, the “facility.” The objective is to ensure that, during the design phase of a building and the definition of its intended use, all possible functional variables are taken into account and the structure is prepared to integrate potential devices and accommodate automation and robotic solutions. This methodological revolution, already tested in other fields, will bring significant improvements not only in terms of efficiency and safety, but also—and above all—in the quality of service delivery.

Services are the invisible infrastructure of well-being: they enhance everyday comfort and contribute directly to people’s health, safety, and longevity.

Toni D’Andrea

Regional Director, ISSA