scholarly journals Digital Health and the Climate Change: Introductory key concepts and Research Topics

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (Supplement_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
V Lapao
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Health Service Delivery ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
European Public ◽  
Healthcare Process ◽  
American Case

Abstract Starting with telemedicine movement 50 years ago, digital health has been changing slowly the healthcare paradigm since. Now with COVID-19 Epidemics has raise the bar and pushed for digital health across the healthcare services. Likewise, public Health should be more engaged on studying future impacts of climate change on health care and look for the opportunities that digital health can bring. At the same time, European Public Health should propose new models for healthy living in the line with sustainable circular economy. Digital health is about health service delivery but it is much more about patients' behaviour and participation in the healthcare process. Digitalization is enabling a change in the role of patients in the healthcare value chain, moreover considering the new European strategy of Health Data Space combined with the European Green Deal. We will present a set of European and American case studies already showing the positive impact of digital health in mitigating climate crises factors, by reducing transportation and materials costs and improving health professionals efficiency, among others. An overview of the recent trends will be discussed and links to public health will be addressed. A special attention will be drawn to a digital public health framework to tackle the climate change future's public health threats.

scholarly journals Workshop: EUPHA and Europe-wide action on digital public health

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Health System Strengthening ◽  
World Health ◽  
Collaborative Action ◽  
European Public ◽  
The World

Abstract The World Health Assembly Resolution on Digital Health unanimously approved by WHO Member States in May 2018 demonstrated a collective recognition of the value of digital technologies to contribute to advancing universal health coverage (UHC) and other health aims of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The World Health Organization has just released first ever guideline on digital interventions for health system strengthening. Et the European level, in June 2018 the WHO Regional Office for Europe launched the WHO/Europe initiative for Digitalization of Health Systems and in February 2019 organized the first Symposium on the Future of Digital Health Systems in the European Region. The European Commission in April 2018 published a Communication on Digital transformation of health and care in the digital single market and requested the Expert Panel on effective ways of investing in health (EXPH) to release an evidence-based opinion on how to assess the impact of digital transformation of health services. In such context, the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) has at an early stage acknowledged and understood the crucial importance of applying the potential offered by digitalization to public health. Not only its most prominent members work and research as WHO and EC experts on how to plan, implement and evaluate effective digital public health interventions, but EUPHA itself - as umbrella organization representing public health associations and institutes across Europe had: i) actively participated to the WHO Euro Symposium successfully co-organizing a session on the ‘beautiful marriage’ between digitalization and public health, ii) supported the publication of a EJPH supplement on digital health and iii) has planned to create a EUPHA Section on Digital Health. With the overall goal of positioning the proposed EUPHA Section on Digital Health in the enriching and constructive context of the European Public Health Conference the workshop specifically aims to: present a comprehensive conceptual framework for the application of digital technologies to public health in Europe;present and report on EUPHA collaborative action on digital health, aligned with European institutions;present the structure and content of the EJPH supplement on digital health;present the general aim, specific objectives, scope, mission and preliminary outputs of the proposed EUPHA Section on Digital Health, as well as its synergy with other EUPHA’s Section workPresent the results of two/three specific projects on digital public health to serve as concrete examples of the application of digital solutions to public healthEngage with the audience to promote the active participation of the broader EUPHA community to the activities of the Section, collect interests and best practices, and share ideas and projects worth scaling up at the Section-level. Key messages The ‘beautiful marriage’ between digitalization and public health has to be concretely planned, implemented and evaluated. EUPHA action on digital public health can be further strengthened through the collaborative action and work of its dedicated Section.

scholarly journals 3.E. Workshop: The Role of Digital Public Health in the European Climate Pact and Green deal

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (Supplement_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Digital Systems ◽  
World Health ◽  
Director General ◽  
European Climate ◽  
The World ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
The Impact

Abstract   Europe is facing two major structural changes: the climate crisis, having a significant impact on public health, and digitalization of the economy, that could play a role in mitigating climate change and its impacts on public health. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in many ways including how we see public health, the climate change and has created the conditions for the almost exponential growth for telemedicine and digitalization in healthcare. Underlining that the world is facing an increasing innovation and integration of digital tools to address public health and environmental problems, as the UN Secretary-General and the Director-General of the World Health Organization both declared that we are currently fighting a climate “pandemic” in the same way as we are fighting COVID-19. Digital solutions have been implemented to address COVID-19 and impacted by reducing CO2 emissions and improving quality of life. Digital systems, including Artificial Intelligence, robots and drones, are now changing the paradigm of public health and environment management. Due to the complex nature of the information ecosystem our societies and communities live in, a digital public health approach can be managed to reduce harm to individual, community and population health, support social cohesion and trust in emergency response and interventions to deal with climate change. Digital health could, within 10 years establish a new paradigm in public and environmental health. Public health professionals need urgently to tackle digital health to bridge the gap with others areas of healthcare. During the COVID-19 crisis, national public health authorities have been challenged in the way they communicate with the public, engage with communities in collecting data to improve response, providing the scientific evidence, the day-to-day facts and figures. Likewise, The European Climate Pact provides a space for collectively develop and implement climate solutions. The Climate Pact is an open, inclusive and evolving initiative for climate action through an online platform and citizen dialogues and exchanges, it will foster the link between the digital and green transition. This workshop aims to share the experiences of digital public health interventions with significant impact on climate change mitigation during the pandemic. It will be organised as a round table, starting by setting the scene with an introduction to key digital health concepts and challenges. Each speaker will give a short pitch on how they have experienced the challenge of using digital systems in public health and how they approached its management during the crisis. This will be followed by a panel discussion. Participants will have ample time to ask questions to the panellists. The workshop will end with a summary of a selection of tools participants can use in their own environmental management activities and key take home messages from the panellist will be provided as a conclusion. Key messages Digital Public Health has been establishing evidence on interventions with significant effects on reducing the impact of climate crisis. A Partnership is needed across the health system and society to manage this crisis. European Green Deal and Climate Pact could be used as a roadmap in digital public health.

scholarly journals Applications of digital health for public health responses to COVID-19: a systematic scoping review of artificial intelligence, telehealth and related technologies

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinesh Visva Gunasekeran ◽  
Rachel Marjorie Wei Wen Tseng ◽  
Yih-Chung Tham ◽  
Tien Yin Wong
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Real World ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Medical Needs ◽  
Wide Range

AbstractThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has overwhelmed healthcare services, faced with the twin challenges in acutely meeting the medical needs of patients with COVID-19 while continuing essential services for non-COVID-19 illnesses. The need to re-invent, re-organize and transform healthcare and co-ordinate clinical services at a population level is urgent as countries that controlled initial outbreaks start to experience resurgences. A wide range of digital health solutions have been proposed, although the extent of successful real-world applications of these technologies is unclear. This study aims to review applications of artificial intelligence (AI), telehealth, and other relevant digital health solutions for public health responses in the healthcare operating environment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A systematic scoping review was performed to identify potentially relevant reports. Key findings include a large body of evidence for various clinical and operational applications of telehealth (40.1%, n = 99/247). Although a large quantity of reports investigated applications of artificial intelligence (AI) (44.9%, n = 111/247) and big data analytics (36.0%, n = 89/247), weaknesses in study design limit generalizability and translation, highlighting the need for more pragmatic real-world investigations. There were also few descriptions of applications for the internet of things (IoT) (2.0%, n = 5/247), digital platforms for communication (DC) (10.9%, 27/247), digital solutions for data management (DM) (1.6%, n = 4/247), and digital structural screening (DS) (8.9%, n = 22/247); representing gaps and opportunities for digital public health. Finally, the performance of digital health technology for operational applications related to population surveillance and points of entry have not been adequately evaluated.

Climate Change, Public Health impacts and the role of the new digital technologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
L Velez Lapão
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Health Determinants ◽  
Co2 Mitigation ◽  
Digital Services ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Health evidence should drive health policies towards health determinants targets. Amongst the environmental health determinants, climate change represents now a clear public health threat. The constant increase of temperatures has multiple consequences on population health, already observed in Europe and elsewhere. The role of healthcare services is paramount, moreover the use of new technologies that can mitigate CO2 emissions and reduce costs while improving healthcare coverage. Reducing the impacts of climate change on the environment and population health is a challenge affecting everyone: it is therefore essential to get actors from all sectors, moreover from the technology side. A scoping review addressed the impact of digital health services on climate change mitigation. Leveraging from previous work on telemedicine and health digital services an impact analysis was done covering both the CO2 mitigation and Costs. An example from a 20 years' telemedicine service is used to exemplify the impact. The impact of a Telecardiology service, as an example of digital service, was addressed and the CO2 mitigation calculated. This service has so far avoided about 2000 flights from Africa to Europe, which means a reduction of more than 16 000 Tons of CO2. From this analysis is complemented with a scoping review showing the evidence from other digital health cases. The optimization of resources is critical in healthcare. In this regard, it is important to assess the actual benefits obtained with the health digital services, giving evidence on the righteousness of the decision-making. Clearly digital health services should be promoted to tackle both health coverage from distance patients and to mitigate climate change footprint and should motivate policy-makers to take this challenge more seriously. This work is contributing to SDG3, improving health, to SDG4, allowing to provide distance health education at relatively low cost and to SDG 13, by reducing the CO2 footprint.

scholarly journals The COVID-19 Emergency in European Public Health: An Evaluation of Measures in the Transition from Healthcare Services to Healthcare Profiling

2020 ◽  
pp. 38-59
Author(s):  
Ubaldo COMITE
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Epidemic Outbreak ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
European Public ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

The healthcare system is at the centre of great attention, having to demonstrate the adequate use of constantly decreasing available resources against a growing healthcare demand. In this context, the diseases characterized by the length of the healthcare assistance plan and high complexities in terms of treatments and complications must be considered. The above may refer to the healthcare emergency following the spread of the COVID-19 virus, employing an enormous amount of resources from both a human and a financial point of view. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, we conducted a comparative study at the European level to study the performance of different combinations of COVID-19 containment measures along with the response speeds. The outcome of this analysis can assist in identifying which set of containment measures, in the event of an epidemic outbreak, is beneficial/detrimental. This work considers combining theoretical considerations and empirical evidence related to the treatment of COVID-19, within what is the success of public health measures in Europe during the COVID-19 emergency.

The Imperatives of Beneficiation Law for Botswana’s Diamond Mining Industry and Its Implications for Foreign Investment Protection

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Femi Oluyeju ◽  
Kuda Tshiamo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Investment Protection ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Diamond Mining ◽  
Backward And Forward Linkages

This article seeks to interrogate the advantages and disadvantages of beneficiation law for Botswana’s mining industry and its implications for foreign investment protection. Furthermore, it argues that the enactment of beneficiation law could stimulate economic growth and development in Botswana. On a proper analysis of the potential of beneficiation law it seems plain that it may facilitate the integration, of among others, the cutting and polishing segments through the backward and forward linkages in the entire diamond value chain to move Botswana diamond industry a step further as a new and emerging jewellery manufacturing and retail center in order to derive maximum returns from the rough diamond production. Quite clearly, cutting and polishing of diamonds in Botswana is bound to promote employment which in turn will promote demand for goods and services that would have a positive impact on economic growth in Botswana.  The paper concludes that on a balance, the opportunities accruable from the enactment of this law far outweigh the downsides and will not in any way scare investors away as some have perceived it.

Corrupt Practices in the Public Health Sector: A Focus on Metropolitan Local Government Areas of Kano State, Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Mohammed Mustapha Namadi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Healthcare Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Sector ◽  
The Government

Corruption is pervasive in Nigeria at all levels. Thus, despite recent gains in healthcare provision, the health sector faces numerous corruption related challenges. This study aims at examining areas of corruption in the health sector with specific focus on its types and nature. A sample size of 480 respondents aged 18 years and above was drawn from the eight Metropolitan Local Government Areas of Kano State, using the multistage sampling technique. The results revealed evidence of corrupt practices including those related to unnecessary-absenteeism, diversion of patients from the public health facilities to the private sector, diverting money meant for the purchase of equipment, fuel and diesel, bribery, stealing of medications, fraud, misappropriation of medications and unjustifiable reimbursement claims. In order to resolve the problem of corrupt practices in the healthcare sector, the study recommended the need for enforcement of appropriate code of ethics guiding the conduct of the health professionals, adoption of anti-corruption strategies, and strengthening the government monitoring system to check corruption in public health sector in order to ensure equitable access to healthcare services among the under-privileged people in the society.

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