Use of digital healthcare solutions for care delivery during a pandemic-chances and (cyber) risks referring to the example of the COVID-19 pandemic (original) (raw)
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Digital health in the era of COVID-19: Reshaping the next generation of healthcare
Frontiers in Public Health
COVID-19 is one of the most deadly diseases to have stricken us in recent decades. In the fight against this disease, governments and stakeholders require all the assistance they can get from various systems, including digital health interventions. Digital health technologies are supporting the tracking of the COVID-19 outbreak, diagnosing patients, expediting the process of finding potential medicines and vaccines, and disinfecting the environment, The establishment of electronic medical and health records, computerized clinical decision support systems, telemedicine, and mobile health have shown the potential to strengthen the healthcare system. Recently, these technologies have aided the health sector in a variety of ways, including prevention, early diagnosis, treatment adherence, medication safety, care coordination, documentation, data management, outbreak tracking, and pandemic surveillance. On the other hand, implementation of such technologies has questions of cost, compati...
A rapid review of digital health strategies and policies in response to COVID-19 pandemic
Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics, 2020
Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented healthcare challenges, both globally and locally. The application of digital technologies offers great value for overcoming these challenges. However, the adoption itself has not been sufficient, appropriate, or uniform. In this regard, successful digital health strategies and policies adopted during this pandemic may form the basis to form exemplars for digital health adoption in similar situations. This study aims at reviewing the above-mentioned digital health strategies and policies with a view of creating value. Methods: A rapid literature search was done through the Research4Life of Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI). Search terms included word combinations to capture all publications related to the current pandemic and digital health strategies from the 1st of January to the 28th of May 2020. First, abstracts were examined for relevance. All works with significant content related to digital health strategies were included for full-text screening. Finally, an in-depth scrutiny of significant works was performed. Results: Search results included 44 abstracts with six duplicates. After initial screening, 38 were selected for full-text screening. Only 26 significantly relevant studies were selected for the final analysis. Studies revealed a variety of digital health strategies adopted by countries and healthcare facilities during COVID-19. Telecare was the most conferred strategy globally (mentioned in 14 studies), where teleconsultations were key in remote service provision. Application of mHealth (two studies), electronic medical record (one study), clinical decision support systems (one study), and social media apps (four studies) have also created great value. Clinical applications included oncologic care, ophthalmic practice, geriatric care, dermatology, psychiatry, oral and maxillofacial surgery, otolaryngology, and electrophysiology. The above was in addition to general patient care, teaching, knowledge sharing, and research. Some have questioned the practicality of the above strategies, whereas the others have cited economic disparities, technology issues, information quality, legislation, and other contextual issues. Moreover, deficiencies in digital health policies at the global level were highlighted, emphasizing the need to strengthen global readiness for digital health adoption. Conclusion: This study summarizes strategies used by countries and health facilities to utilize the full potential of digital health applications during pandemics. The above principles may form part of mainstream policies and strategies for delivering healthcare and international corporation in similar situations. The study further highlights the need for an immediate and inclusive global dialogue in this regard.
Digital Health Technologies During COVID-19: A New Normal in Primary Health Care Delivery
The primary health care (PHC) in the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978, revisited in the Astana Declaration of 2018, underpins the fundamental goal of achieving universal healthcare coverage. The 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) shows that rapidly spreading outbreaks can significantly hamper the provision of PHC. This study investigates how digital health technologies (DHTs) evolved to support the PHC sector during COVID-19 and lessons for the future improvement of PHC. A systematic review was conducted through database searches (PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar) and hand-searching of grey documents published in English between December 2019 and December 2021. The study employed thematic content analysis and synthesis. The final synthesis included 46 documents: 40 articles; one book; two book chapters; one working paper; and two technical reports. Around 19 major theme categories were found, with the top three being the eHealth category, comprising themes like telemedicine, e-presc...
Transformation of Digital Health Care Environment: A Solution for Pandemic
International Journal of Information Systems and Computer Technologies
The epidemic is a doorway. It has created a new portal that involves re-defining of living styles, working habits, health care, and socialization among people and nonhuman species. The World health organization has announced publically that novel coronavirus as a pandemic. The problem is to overcome the situation of this pandemic which involves the social distancing issues, by transforming the conventional medical health care systems to digital health care system. Post pandemic demands a fundamental change of healthcare systems that have the abilities to handle those issues. Meanwhile, as the pandemic becomes more severe, the most important objective is the paradigm shift in conventional health systems to combat the pandemic by purposing the taxonomy on the basis of digital technologies. Thus, an Artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of things (IoT) based digital healthcare system model is proposed. Moreover, a thorough investigation is conducted, ensuring in a timely guide to t...
Successfully Implementing Digital Health to Ensure Future Global Health Security During Pandemics
JAMA Network Open, 2022
IMPORTANCE COVID-19 has highlighted widespread chronic underinvestment in digital health that hampered public health responses to the pandemic. Recognizing this, the Riyadh Declaration on Digital Health, formulated by an international interdisciplinary team of medical, academic, and industry experts at the Riyadh Global Digital Health Summit in August 2020, provided a set of digital health recommendations for the global health community to address the challenges of current and future pandemics. However, guidance is needed on how to implement these recommendations in practice. OBJECTIVE To develop guidance for stakeholders on how best to deploy digital health and data and support public health in an integrated manner to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics. EVIDENCE REVIEW Themes were determined by first reviewing the literature and Riyadh Global Digital Health Summit conference proceedings, with experts independently contributing ideas. Then, 2 rounds of review were conducted until all experts agreed on the themes and main issues arising using a nominal group technique to reach consensus. Prioritization was based on how useful the consensus recommendation might be to a policy maker. FINDINGS A diverse stakeholder group of 13 leaders in the fields of public health, digital health, and health care were engaged to reach a consensus on how to implement digital health recommendations to address the challenges of current and future pandemics. Participants reached a consensus on high-priority issues identified within 5 themes: team, transparency and trust, technology, techquity (the strategic development and deployment of technology in health care and health to achieve health equity), and transformation. Each theme contains concrete points of consensus to guide the local, national, and international adoption of digital health to address challenges of current and future pandemics. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The consensus points described for these themes provide a roadmap for the implementation of digital health policy by all stakeholders, including governments. Implementation of these recommendations could have a significant impact by reducing fatalities and uniting countries on current and future battles against pandemics.
2020
UNSTRUCTURED During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, digital technologies have become a major route for accessing remote care. Therefore, the need to ensure that these tools are safe and effective has never been greater. We raise five calls to action to ensure the safety, availability, and long-term sustainability of these technologies: (1) due diligence: remove harmful health apps from app stores; (2) data insights: use relevant health data insights from high-quality digital tools to inform the greater response to COVID-19; (3) freely available resources: make high-quality digital health tools available without charge, where possible, and for as long as possible, especially to those who are most vulnerable; (4) digital transitioning: transform conventional offline mental health services to make them digitally available; and (5) population self-management: encourage governments and insurers to work with developers to look at how digital health management could be subsidize...
Research, Society and Development
COVID-19 has created enormous challenges for health systems around the world. An immense range of digital health technologies has been considered as strategies. The aim of this article is to describe the implementation of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic in prevention, diagnosis and treatment globally. Relevant articles published electronically in English using the following terms "COVID-19", "2019-nCov", "coronavirus", terminologies, "severe acute respiratory syndrome 2", SARS-CoV-2", "access to digital health, telemedicine and e-health, challenges and opportunities, in different data sources were researched. A total of 455 articles were found, and 46 published articles about prevention, treatment, and diagnosis approaches were selected. Digital technologies were useful in holistic control, care management and prevention, digital information, data collection, transfer and storage, frontline protection, risk reductio...
2020
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic is straining health systems and disrupting the delivery of healthcare services, in particular for the elderly and those with chronic conditions, who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. OBJECTIVE The aim of this project is to support primary healthcare provision with a digital health platform that will allow primary care physicians and nurses to remotely manage the care of patients with chronic diseases or COVID-19 infections. METHODS The project followed the 6 steps of the Design Science implementation methodology framework: problem identification and motivation, definition of the objectives aligned with Goal-oriented care, artefact design and development, solution demonstration, evaluation, and communication. RESULTS The digital platform was developed for the specific objectives of the project and successfully piloted in three primary healthcare centers in the Lisbon Health Region. The health professionals were able to safely and thor...