A critical review of the role of technology and context in digital health research (original) (raw)
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Health (London, England : 1997), 2015
In this article, I provide some reflections on critical digital health research in the context of Health's 20th anniversary. I begin by outlining the various iterations of digital technologies that have occurred since the early 1990s - from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. I then review the research that has been published on the topic of digital health in this journal over the past two decades and make some suggestions for the types of directions and theoretical perspectives that further sociocultural and political research could tackle. My concluding comments identify four main areas for further research: (1) devices and software, (2) data materialisations, (3) data practices and (4) data mobilities.
Digital Health: Sociological Perspectives
Special Issue: Sociology of Health & Illness, 2019
Digital technologies are increasingly being developed, implemented and used in the delivery of health and care, contributing to potentially disruptive changes in how healthcare is practised and experienced by health professionals, patients and those within their wider care networks. The papers in this collection explore how sociological theory, often at the intersection with science and technology studies (STS), can help us understand these changes. With contributions from international scholars in the field, papers in this collection explore diverse fields of healthcare (reproductive health, primary care, diabetes management, mental health) within which heterogenous technologies (health apps, mobile platforms, smart textiles, time-lapse imaging) are becoming increasingly embedded. They offer insights into the promissory discourses that constitute digital health and the ways in which knowledge, connectivity and power are re-configured in a range of situated health and care practices.
Sociology of Health & Illness, 2019
In this editorial introduction, we explore how digital health is being explored at the intersection of sociology of health and science and technology studies (STS). We suggest that socio-material approaches and practice theories provide a shared space within which productive tensions between sociology of health and STS can continue. These tensions emerge around the long-standing challenges of avoiding technological determinism while maintaining a clear focus on the materiality and agency of technologies and recognising enduring sets of relations that emerge in new digital health practices while avoiding social determinism. The papers in this Special Issue explore diverse fields of healthcare (e.g. reproductive health, primary care, diabetes management, mental health) within which heterogenous technologies (e.g. health apps, mobile platforms, smart textiles, time-lapse imaging) are becoming increasingly embedded. By synthesising the main arguments and contributions in each paper, we elaborate on four key dimensions within which digital technologies create ambivalence and (re)configure health practices. First, promissory digital health highlights contradictory virtues within discourses that configure digital health. Second, (re)configuring knowledge outlines ambivalences of navigating new information environments and handling quantified data. Third, (re)configuring connectivity explores the relationships that evolve through digital networks. Fourth, (re)configuring control explores how new forms of power are inscribed and handled within algorithmic decision-making in health. We argue that these dimensions offer fruitful perspectives along which digital health can be explored across a range of technologies and health practices. We conclude by highlighting applications, methods and dimensions of digital health that require further research.
What is Digital Health? Review of Definitions
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
Digital technologies are transforming the health sector all over the world, however various aspects of this emerging field of science is yet to be properly understood. Ambiguity in the definition of digital health is a hurdle for research, policy, and practice in this field. With the aim of achieving a consensus in the definition of digital health, we undertook a quantitative analysis and term mapping of the published definitions of digital health. After inspecting 1527 records, we analyzed 95 unique definitions of digital health, from both scholar and general sources. The findings showed that digital health, as has been used in the literature, is more concerned about the provision of healthcare rather than the use of technology. Wellbeing of people, both at population and individual levels, have been more emphasized than the care of patients suffering from diseases. Also, the use of data and information for the care of patients was highlighted. A dominant concept in digital health ...
Health in the Digital World, 2021
Information Technology (HIT) and Digital Health are rapidly transforming healthcare systems spurred by technology innovation, government initiatives, and growing challenges of the 21 st century in improving quality, efficiency, and patient experiences. Furthermore, the transformation of the healthcare system through new technological developments is moving into processes, practices and relationships across the ecosystem and is creating new opportunities for the sector and presents the potential to develop new strategies to cope with health risks.
DIGITAL HEALTH: How Modern Technology Is Changing Medicine and Healthcare
Digital Health: How Modern Technology is Changing Medicine and Healthcare, 2023
Digital Health can be defined as the use of technology to improve individual healthcare. This book provides an introduction and covers; Electronic Health Records, wearables, Social Media in Medicine, AI in Medicine, Telehealth, and the Internet of Medical Things. Available to purchase from Amazon, search 'mark walker digital health' OR: www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Health-technology-changing-healthcare/dp/1446755967/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=3CRX3B3LU6D12&keywords=digital+health+mark+walker&qid=1708103249&sprefix=digital+health+walker+%2Caps%2C247&sr=8-1
Editorial Beyond Techno-Utopia: Critical Approaches to Digital Health Technologies
2014
This editorial presents an overview of digital health technologies, discusses previous research and introduces the contributions to the special issue "Beyond Techno-Utopia: Critical Approaches to Digital Health Technologies". It is argued that thus far, few critical analyses of digital health technologies have been published in the social science literature, particularly in relation to the newest technologies. While the articles collected here in this special issue have gone some way in offering a critical response to digital health technologies, they represent only a beginning. Many more compelling topics remain to be investigated. The editorial ends with outlining directions for future research in this area.
Translating the Digital Health Conceptual Framework into population health practice
Journal of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth
Maeder et al., 1 described a framework for conceptualising digital health interventions during COVID-19 (the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic). Though perhaps not the primary intent, the possibility that this may be generalisable to global pandemics or possibly even further as a conceptual framework for digital health exists. These framework dimensions and their subcomponents are listed in table 1, though some modifications have been made that made sense to this author in terms of clarity of concept (these are highlighted).
Frequent statements are now made in the medical and public health literature about an imminent revolution in health care, preventive medicine and public health driven by the use of digital devices and associated apps, websites and platforms. However it is important to adopt a more critical approach when assessing the impact and implications of digital health. Digital health technologies potentially generate different ways of thinking about, practising and experiencing medicine, healthcare and public health. From a perspective that is informed by critical social and cultural theory, these changes have the potential to challenge entrenched conceptualisations and experiences of illness, health, disease and medical care and practice. In this chapter, following an overview of the range of digital health technologies that are currently in use, I focus on the digital data that are generated from these technologies, discussing the implications for the digital knowledge economy, data security and privacy, social inequalities and civil rights.