digital health (digital healthcare)

 

digital health (digital healthcare)

• Corinne Bernstein

Digital health, or digital healthcare, is a broad, multidisciplinary concept that includes concepts from an intersection between technology and healthcare. Digital health applies digital transformation to the healthcare field, incorporating software, hardware and services. Under its umbrella, digital health includes mobile health (mHealth) apps, electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, as well as personalized medicine.

Stakeholders in the digital health field include patients, practitioners, researchers, application developers, and medical device manufacturers and distributors. Digital healthcare plays an increasingly important role in healthcare today.

Terms related to digital health include health information technology (health IT), healthcare tools, health analytics, healthcare informatics, hospital IT and medical technology.

What is digital health as we know it today?

The application of information and communications technology to provide digital health interventions to prevent disease and improve quality of life isn't a new concept. However, in the face of global concerns -- related to aging, child illness and mortality, epidemics and pandemics, high costs, and the effects of poverty and racial discrimination on access to healthcare -- digital health platforms, health systems and related technology continue to grow in importance and to evolve.

Government health insurance programs, such as the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA), have also brought about new developments in digital health. Despite technical issues when ACA was initially launched, ACA's objectives included improving the quality of healthcare through technology. For example, this included improving the quality of EHRs and computer modeling used to track healthcare spending. Employing technology and data to improve patient health and quality of care is called healthcare informatics. This enables healthcare professionals to assess new programs, look for areas of improvement within the healthcare sector and integrate new technologies into medicine.

Further fanning the flames of change, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped further fuel the ongoing digital transformation in healthcare. According to Forrester Research, the most impactful COVID-19 technologies include patient-facing tools, such as online symptom checkers, patient portals, remote patient monitoring tools and telehealth.

Why is digital health important?

According to Deloitte Insights, digital health employs more than just technologies and tools; it also views "radically interoperable data, artificial intelligence (AI), and open, secure platforms as central to the promise of more consumer-focused, prevention-oriented care."

Advances in AI, big data, robotics and machine learning continue to bring about major changes in digital healthcare. Also, alternations in the digital healthcare landscape continue developments in ingestible sensors, robotic caregivers, and devices and apps to monitor patients remotely.

According to Deloitte: "AI will enable major scientific breakthroughs, accelerating the creation of new therapies and vaccines to fight diseases. AI-enabled digital therapeutics and personalized recommendations will empower consumers to prevent health issues from developing. AI-generated insights will influence diagnosis and treatment choices, leading to safer and more effective treatments. Additionally, intelligent manufacturing and supply chain solutions will ensure the right treatments and interventions are delivered at the exact moment needed by the patient."

Precedence Research projected that the global digital health market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.9% from 2020 to 2027, when it will reach $833.44 billion. According to the Ottawa-based market research firm, a jump in the number of healthcare apps is fueling this growth. North America accounts for the dominant share in the global digital health market due to the region's rising elderly population, high adoption rate of smartphones, and the push to develop apps and digital healthcare platforms to reduce healthcare costs.

Examples of digital health technology

Digital health innovations are designed to help save time, boost accuracy and efficiency, and combine technologies in ways that are new to healthcare. These innovations can meld medicine and the internet of things, mHealth and IoT, medicine and augmented reality (AR), and blockchain and EMRs.

The internet of medical things (IoMT) refers to the combination of medical devices and applications connecting to health IT systems that use networking technologies. IoT use cases range from telemedicine technology to improve communication between patients and doctors, to decreasing the potential for exposure to contagious diseases and to various smart sensor technologies that can collect data at the user level. For example, demand for telehealth services rose as a result of COVID-19, with a greater number of providers relying on technology to deliver virtual services to patients.

Innovative IoT applications in healthcare continue to emerge. Cleveland Clinic ranked smartphone-based pacemaker devices as a top innovation for 2021. Using a mobile app, smartphone-connected pacemaker devices can be designed to securely and wirelessly transmit data to a patient's network, giving patients better insight into the health data from the pacemakers and transmitting the health information to their physicians.

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