What is digital health? Definition, technologies, benefits

What is digital health?

Digital health is using information and communications technologies in medicine and other health professions to manage illnesses and health risks, promote wellness and address the operational needs of healthcare organisations and providers.

Digital health includes improving access to healthcare, reducing the cost of healthcare, improving the quality of patient care, making medicine more personalised and precise and enhancing the efficiency of healthcare delivery.

Moreover, it also addresses the operational needs of healthcare organisations and providers, including digital platforms to manage scheduling, billing, admissions and discharges and patient communication.

Digital health benefits patients, clinicians, researchers, application developers, medical device manufacturers and distributors. For example, AI tools can help with the early diagnosis and prediction of cardiovascular diseases. At the same time, digital devices like smartphones can enable health apps to help patients monitor blood pressure, record blood sugar, ensure medicine compliance and track physical activity.

Digital health goals include improving the quality of care and service outcomes, population health, the patient experience, the physician and non-physician provider experience and addressing health disparities.

Digital health technologies

Digital health technologies use computing platforms, connectivity, software and sensors for health care and related uses.

Examples of digital health include:

Wearable devices
Mobile health apps
Electronic health records (EHRs)
Electronic medical records (EMRs)
Telehealth and telemedicine
Personalised medicine
Diagnostics tools
Predictive modelling
Patient portals
Decision support systems
Bioinformatics tools

Digital health tools incorporate various technologies to deliver more advanced capabilities, improve efficiency and accuracy and reduce errors. These include AI, intelligent manufacturing, internet of medical things (IoMT), MHealth, EMR and blockchain, augmented reality and big data.

Benefits of digital health

Digital tools and technologies give providers a more holistic view of patient health through access to data and giving patients more control over their health. Digital health offers opportunities to improve medical outcomes and enhance efficiency.

These technologies empower customers to make better-informed decisions about their health and offer new options for facilitating prevention, early diagnosis of life-threatening diseases and managing chronic conditions outside of traditional healthcare settings.

Digital health applications can also augment human decision-making by automating and accelerating previously labour-intensive tasks. Many hospitals, for example, use digital monitoring tools to track patient safety metrics like hospital-acquired infections or hand hygiene compliance in real-time and other systems to streamline workflows, save time and cut costs. In medical imaging, AI reduces the number of clicks needed to perform a task and provides actionable recommendations based on context and real-time information.

Challenges of digital health

The digital transformation of healthcare has raised several challenges that affect patients, medical professionals, technology developers, policymakers and other stakeholders. Due to the massive amounts of data collected from various systems that store and code data differently, data interoperability is an ongoing challenge, making it difficult to use data in meaningful ways.

Another concern is that patients need more digital literacy, which prevents them from effectively using today's tools for their benefit. These include telehealth platforms, patient-physician portals, medical social media sites and wearable devices.

Next, data storage, access, sharing and ownership issues raise important questions about data security and patient privacy. For example, can an employer or insurer access data from direct-to-consumer genetic testing results? How should a healthcare organisation prevent data breaches when all its medical devices are networked?

Additional concerns relate to technology, ethics and insurance costs. For example, when medical robots are used, who is responsible for mistakes made during surgery: the hospital, the technology developer or manufacturer or the doctor who used the robot? These concerns influence the adoption of digital health innovations in healthcare organisations.

Digital health is not just about employing technologies and tools to improve a limited scope of healthcare outcomes. Instead, it touches every part of healthcare operations and delivery through interoperable systems, technologies, and interactive platforms. Digital healthcare solutions offer safer, higher-quality, more cost-effective and more patient-focused care and services.

Digital Health