scholarly journals Back to the Future: Achieving Health Equity Through Health Informatics and Digital Health (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaPrincess C Brewer ◽  
Karen L Fortuna ◽  
Clarence Jones ◽  
Robert Walker ◽  
Sharonne N Hayes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Health Care Disparities ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
Community Engaged Research ◽  
Health Innovations ◽  
Technological Advances

UNSTRUCTURED The rapid proliferation of health informatics and digital health innovations has revolutionized clinical and research practices. There is no doubt that these fields will continue to have accelerated growth and a substantial impact on population health. However, there are legitimate concerns about how these promising technological advances can lead to unintended consequences such as perpetuating health and health care disparities for underresourced populations. To mitigate this potential pitfall, it is imperative for the health informatics and digital health scientific communities to understand the challenges faced by disadvantaged groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, which hinder their achievement of ideal health. This paper presents illustrative exemplars as case studies of contextually tailored, sociotechnical mobile health interventions designed with community members to address health inequities using community-engaged research approaches. We strongly encourage researchers and innovators to integrate community engagement into the development of data-driven, modernized solutions for every sector of society to truly achieve health equity for all.

scholarly journals Back to the Future: Achieving Health Equity Through Health Informatics and Digital Health

10.2196/14512 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. e14512 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaPrincess C Brewer ◽  
Karen L Fortuna ◽  
Clarence Jones ◽  
Robert Walker ◽  
Sharonne N Hayes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Health Care Disparities ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
Community Engaged Research ◽  
Health Innovations ◽  
Technological Advances

The rapid proliferation of health informatics and digital health innovations has revolutionized clinical and research practices. There is no doubt that these fields will continue to have accelerated growth and a substantial impact on population health. However, there are legitimate concerns about how these promising technological advances can lead to unintended consequences such as perpetuating health and health care disparities for underresourced populations. To mitigate this potential pitfall, it is imperative for the health informatics and digital health scientific communities to understand the challenges faced by disadvantaged groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, which hinder their achievement of ideal health. This paper presents illustrative exemplars as case studies of contextually tailored, sociotechnical mobile health interventions designed with community members to address health inequities using community-engaged research approaches. We strongly encourage researchers and innovators to integrate community engagement into the development of data-driven, modernized solutions for every sector of society to truly achieve health equity for all.

scholarly journals Digital Health Equity and COVID-19 – The Innovation Curve Cannot Reinforce the Social Gradient of Health (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Crawford ◽  
Eva Serhal
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Provider Training ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Health Delivery ◽  
Health Innovations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Centered Care ◽  
The Individual

UNSTRUCTURED Digital health innovations have been rapidly implemented and scaled to provide solutions to some health delivery challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. This has enabled ongoing access to vital health services while minimizing potential exposure to infection and maintaining social distancing. However, these solutions may have unintended consequences on health equity. Poverty, access to digital health, poor engagement with digital health for some communities, and barriers to digital health literacy are some of the factors that can contribute to poor health outcomes. We present the Digital Health Equity Framework, which can be used to consider health equity factors. Along with person-centered care, digital health equity should be incorporated into health provider training, and should be championed the individual, institutional, and social levels. Important future directions will be to develop measurement-based approaches to digital health equity, and to use these findings to further validate and refine this model.

scholarly journals Digital Health Equity and COVID-19: The Innovation Curve Cannot Reinforce the Social Gradient of Health

10.2196/19361 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. e19361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Crawford ◽  
Eva Serhal
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Provider Training ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Health Delivery ◽  
Health Innovations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Centered Care ◽  
The Individual

Digital health innovations have been rapidly implemented and scaled to provide solutions to health delivery challenges posed by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This has provided people with ongoing access to vital health services while minimizing their potential exposure to infection and allowing them to maintain social distancing. However, these solutions may have unintended consequences for health equity. Poverty, lack of access to digital health, poor engagement with digital health for some communities, and barriers to digital health literacy are some factors that can contribute to poor health outcomes. We present the Digital Health Equity Framework, which can be used to consider health equity factors. Along with person-centered care, digital health equity should be incorporated into health provider training and should be championed at the individual, institutional, and social levels. Important future directions will be to develop measurement-based approaches to digital health equity and to use these findings to further validate and refine this model.

scholarly journals All that Glitters Is not Gold: Consumer Health Informatics and Education in the Era of Social Media and Health Apps

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (01) ◽  
pp. 188-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Staccini ◽  
L. Fernandez-Luque ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Health Management ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Consumer Health Informatics ◽  
Consumer Health ◽  
Chronic Patients

Summary Objective: To summarize the state of the art published during the year 2015 in the areas related to consumer health informatics and education with a special emphasis on unintended consequences of applying mobile and social media technologies in that domain. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of articles published in PubMed with a predefined set of queries, which lead to the selection of over 700 potential relevant articles. Section editors screened those papers on the title, abstract, and finally complete paper basis, taking into account the papers’ relevance for the section topic. The 15 most representative papers were finally selected by consensus between the two section editors and submitted for full review and scoring to external reviewers and the yearbook editors. Based on the final scoring, section editors selected the best five papers. Results: The five best papers can be grouped in two major areas: 1) Digital health literacy and 2) Quality and safety concerns. Regarding health literacy issues of patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, online interventions should rather focus on changing patient beliefs about the disease than on supporting them in the management of their pathology since personally controlled health management systems do not show expected benefits,. Nevertheless, encouraging and training chronic patients for an active online health information–seeking behaviour substantially decreases state anxiety level. Regarding safety and privacy issues, even recommended health-related apps available on mobile phones do not guarantee personal data protection. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that patients undergoing Internet interventions experienced at least one adverse event that might be related to treatment. At least, predictive factors have been identified in order to credit or not a health rumour. Conclusions: Trusting digital and connected health can be achieved if patients, health care professionals, and industrials build a shared model of health data management integrating ethics rules. Only increasing efforts in education with regards of digital health would help reach this goal., This would not resolve all frauds and security issues but at least improve their detection.

scholarly journals Advocating for equity during the pandemic

BMJ Leader ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. leader-2020-000380
Author(s):  
Onyinyechi F Eke ◽  
Alister Martin ◽  
Hazar Khidir ◽  
Onyeka Otugo ◽  
Andrew Marshall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
The State ◽  
Standards Of Care ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Alternative Framework ◽  
Marginalised Groups

In response to an imminent surge in COVID-19 cases, the state of Massachusetts (MA) released its Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) guidelines in April 2020. A small group of Boston healthcare providers, community members, lawyers, ethicists and disability advocates brought to bear our collective strengths to forge a formidable coalition now known as the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity, to champion the rights of marginalised groups that would be adversely affected by the implementation of the original MA CSC guidelines. In this coalition, members of marginalised communities were adequately represented, led discussions on the implications of implementing inequitable elements of the CSC guidelines and actively involved in creating an alternative framework. In this article, we discuss the process of building a coalition whose concerted advocacy efforts led to the revision of the MA CSC guidelines.

scholarly journals A technology-assisted life of recovery from psychosis

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dror Ben-Zeev ◽  
Benjamin Buck ◽  
Sarah Kopelovich ◽  
Suzanne Meller
Keyword(s):  
Early Detection ◽  
Symptom Management ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Clinical Population ◽  
Illness Management ◽  
Illness Management And Recovery ◽  
Health Technologies ◽  
Health Innovations ◽  
Schizophrenia Spectrum

Abstract Developments in digital health technologies have the potential to expedite and strengthen the path towards recovery for people with psychosis. This perspective piece provides a snapshot of how a range of digital technologies can be deployed to support a young adult’s efforts to cope with schizophrenia-spectrum illness. In conjunction with a day in the life of this individual, we provide examples of innovations in digital health research designed for this clinical population, as well as brief summaries of the evidence supporting the usability, feasibility, or effectiveness of each approach. From early detection to ongoing symptom management and vocational rehabilitation, this day-in-the-life vignette provides an overview of the ways in which digital health innovations could be used in concert to augment, scaffold, and enhance schizophrenia-spectrum illness management and recovery.

Digital Health Care Disparities

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. inside_front_cover-inside_front_cover
Author(s):  
Diane M. Korngiebel
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Disparities ◽  
Digital Health

Focusing on Digital Health Equity

JAMA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney R. Lyles ◽  
Robert M. Wachter ◽  
Urmimala Sarkar
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Digital Health

scholarly journals Health Informatics in Developing Countries: A Review of Unintended Consequences of IT Implementations, as They Affect Patient Safety and Recommendations on How to Address Them

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (01) ◽  
pp. 70-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Almerares ◽  
D. Luna ◽  
A. Marcelo ◽  
M. Househ ◽  
H. Mandirola ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Patient Safety ◽  
Health Information Technology ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Healthcare Organization ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Alert Fatigue ◽  
Available Information

SummaryBackground: Patient safety concerns every healthcare organization. Adoption of Health information technology (HIT) appears to have the potential to address this issue, however unanticipated and undesirable consequences from implementing HIT could lead to new and more complex hazards. This could be particularly problematic in developing countries, where regulations, policies and implementations are few, less standandarized and in some cases almost non-existing.Methods: Based on the available information and our own experience, we conducted a review of unintended consequences of HIT implementations, as they affect patient safety in developing countries.Results: We found that user dependency on the system, alert fatigue, less communications among healthcare actors and workarounds topics should be prioritize. Institution should consider existing knowledge, learn from other experiences and model their implementations to avoid known consequences. We also recommend that they monitor and communicate their own efforts to expand knowledge in the region.

scholarly journals Opportunities and Challenges Surrounding the Use of Data From Wearable Sensor Devices in Health Care: Qualitative Interview Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ijeoma Azodo ◽  
Robin Williams ◽  
Aziz Sheikh ◽  
Kathrin Cresswell
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Wearable Sensors ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Wearable Sensor ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
Sensor Devices ◽  
Care Technology ◽  
International Experts

BACKGROUND Wearable sensors connected via networked devices have the potential to generate data that may help to automate processes of care, engage patients, and increase health care efficiency. The evidence of effectiveness of such technologies is, however, nascent and little is known about unintended consequences. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to explore the opportunities and challenges surrounding the use of data from wearable sensor devices in health care. METHODS We conducted a qualitative, theoretically informed, interview-based study to purposefully sample international experts in health care, technology, business, innovation, and social sciences, drawing on sociotechnical systems theory. We used in-depth interviews to capture perspectives on development, design, and use of data from wearable sensor devices in health care, and employed thematic analysis of interview transcripts with NVivo to facilitate coding. RESULTS We interviewed 16 experts. Although the use of data from wearable sensor devices in health and care has significant potential in improving patient engagement, there are a number of issues that stakeholders need to negotiate to realize these benefits. These issues include the current gap between data created and meaningful interpretation in health and care contexts, integration of data into health care professional decision making, negotiation of blurring lines between consumer and medical care, and pervasive monitoring of health across previously disconnected contexts. CONCLUSIONS Stakeholders need to actively negotiate existing challenges to realize the integration of data from wearable sensor devices into electronic health records. Viewing wearables as active parts of a connected digital health and care infrastructure, in which various business, personal, professional, and health system interests align, may help to achieve this.

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