scholarly journals Social and Managerial Aspects of Using Digital Health Technologies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valery Igorevich Yudin

The development of the health sector around the world is linked to digital technologies, because there is a need to optimize the processes of medical care for the population. Every year there is an increase in this market by a quarter. The use of digital technologies helps to improve health care. The management and organization system implements unified effective systems using the technological capabilities of digitalization in the health care sector. The relevance of the study is related to the need to change the outdated health management system with access to a modern level of technical and administrative support for medical services.The actual tool of digital medicine is cooperative forms of network interaction. We are exploring the further development of digital medicine in the short term, what opportunities can be presented and what results can be obtained by residents. Network communications play an important role in uniting professional medical communities. More than 65% of people between the ages of 21 and 35 have become participants in network technologies, and their number is constantly increasing. Administrative and management staffs are most active in discussions (43%) on the Internet and all respondents have an idea about telemedicine. Patients have the opportunity to get advice by contacting doctors online. The next stage in the development of information technologies is associated with increasing the speed and volume of transmitted data, which will help to predict critical conditions that threaten the patient’s health as quickly as possible. Now there is a discussion about the possibility of not just consulting, but also making diagnoses when patients contact the doctor, discussing in which cases a personal meeting with the doctor is necessary and under what conditions it is enough to provide maximum information about the state of health for diagnosis. Keywords: digital healthcare, digital technologies, adaptation, medical specialists

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Taylor Kelley ◽  
Jamie Fujioka ◽  
Kyle Liang ◽  
Madeline Cooper ◽  
Trevor Jamieson ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Health systems are increasingly looking toward the private sector to provide digital solutions to address health care demands. Innovation in digital health is largely driven by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), yet these companies experience significant barriers to entry, especially in public health systems. Complex and fragmented care models, alongside a myriad of relevant stakeholders (eg, purchasers, providers, and producers of health care products), make developing value propositions for digital solutions highly challenging. OBJECTIVE This study aims to identify areas for health system improvement to promote the integration of innovative digital health technologies developed by SMEs. METHODS This paper qualitatively analyzes a series of case studies to identify health system barriers faced by SMEs developing digital health technologies in Canada and proposed solutions to encourage a more innovative ecosystem. The Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care established a consultation program for SMEs to help them increase their innovation capacity and take their ideas to market. The consultation involved the SME filling out an onboarding form and review of this information by an expert advisory committee using guided considerations, leading to a recommendation report provided to the SME. This paper reports on the characteristics of 25 SMEs who completed the program and qualitatively analyzed their recommendation reports to identify common barriers to digital health innovation. RESULTS A total of 2 central themes were identified, each with 3 subthemes. First, a common barrier to system integration was the lack of formal evaluation, with SMEs having limited resources and opportunities to conduct such an evaluation. Second, the health system’s current structure does not create incentives for clinicians to use digital technologies, which threatens the sustainability of SMEs’ business models. SMEs faced significant challenges in engaging users and payers from the public system due to perverse economic incentives. Physicians are compensated by in-person visits, which actively works against the goals of many digital health solutions of keeping patients out of clinics and hospitals. CONCLUSIONS There is a significant disconnect between the economic incentives that drive clinical behaviors and the use of digital technologies that would benefit patients’ well-being. To encourage the use of digital health technologies, publicly funded health systems need to dedicate funding for the evaluation of digital solutions and streamlined pathways for clinical integration.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Afua Adjekum ◽  
Alessandro Blasimme ◽  
Effy Vayena

BACKGROUND Information and communication technologies have long become prominent components of health systems. Rapid advances in digital technologies and data science over the last few years are predicted to have a vast impact on health care services, configuring a paradigm shift into what is now commonly referred to as digital health. Forecasted to curb rising health costs as well as to improve health system efficiency and safety, digital health success heavily relies on trust from professional end users, administrators, and patients. Yet, what counts as the building blocks of trust in digital health systems has so far remained underexplored. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to analyze what relevant stakeholders consider as enablers and impediments of trust in digital health. METHODS We performed a scoping review to map out trust in digital health. To identify relevant digital health studies, we searched 5 electronic databases. Using keywords and Medical Subject Headings, we targeted all relevant studies and set no boundaries for publication year to allow a broad range of studies to be identified. The studies were screened by 2 reviewers after which a predefined data extraction strategy was employed and relevant themes documented. RESULTS Overall, 278 qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and intervention studies in English, published between 1998 and 2017 and conducted in 40 countries were included in this review. Patients and health care professionals were the two most prominent stakeholders of trust in digital health; a third—health administrators—was substantially less prominent. Our analysis identified cross-cutting personal, institutional, and technological elements of trust that broadly cluster into 16 enablers (altruism, fair data access, ease of use, self-efficacy, sociodemographic factors, recommendation by other users, usefulness, customizable design features, interoperability, privacy, initial face-to-face contact, guidelines for standardized use, stakeholder engagement, improved communication, decreased workloads, and service provider reputation) and 10 impediments (excessive costs, limited accessibility, sociodemographic factors, fear of data exploitation, insufficient training, defective technology, poor information quality, inadequate publicity, time-consuming, and service provider reputation) to trust in digital health. CONCLUSIONS Trust in digital health technologies and services depends on the interplay of a complex set of enablers and impediments. This study is a contribution to ongoing efforts to understand what determines trust in digital health according to different stakeholders. Therefore, it offers valuable points of reference for the implementation of innovative digital health services. Building on insights from this study, actionable metrics can be developed to assess the trustworthiness of digital technologies in health care.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Lupton ◽  
Sarah Maslen

BACKGROUND A range of digital technologies are available to lay people to find, share, and generate health-related information. Few studies have directed attention specifically to how women are using these technologies from the diverse array available to them. Even fewer have focused on Australian women’s use of digital health. OBJECTIVE The Australian Women and Digital Health Project aimed to investigate which types of digital technologies women used regularly for health-related purposes and which they found most helpful and useful. Qualitative methods—semistructured interviews and focus groups—were employed to shed light on the situated complexities of the participants’ enactments of digital health technologies. The project adopted a feminist new materialism theoretical perspective, focusing on the affordances, relational connections, and affective forces that came together to open up or close off the agential capacities generated with and through these enactments. METHODS The project comprised two separate studies including a total of 66 women. In study 1, 36 women living in the city of Canberra took part in face-to-face interviews and focus groups, while study 2 involved telephone interviews with 30 women from other areas of Australia. RESULTS The affordances of search engines to locate health information and websites and social media platforms for providing information and peer support were highly used and valued. Affective forces such as the desire for trust, motivation, empowerment, reassurance, control, care, and connection emerged in the participants’ accounts. Agential capacities generated with and through digital health technologies included the capacity to seek and generate information and create a better sense of knowledge and expertise about bodies, illness, and health care, including the women’s own bodies and health, that of their families and friends, and that of their often anonymous online social networks. The participants referred time and again to appreciating the feelings of agency and control that using digital health technologies afforded them. When the technologies failed to work as expected, these agential capacities were not realized. Women responded with feelings of frustration, disappointment, and annoyance, leading them to become disenchanted with the possibilities of the digital technologies they had tried. CONCLUSIONS The findings demonstrate the nuanced and complex ways in which the participants were engaging with and contributing to online sources of information and using these sources together with face-to-face encounters with doctors and other health care professionals and friends and family members. They highlight the lay forms of expertise that the women had developed in finding, assessing, and creating health knowledges. The study also emphasized the key role that many women play in providing advice and health care for family members not only as digitally engaged patients but also as digitally engaged carers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172199673
Author(s):  
Sarah Lenz

Against the background of the increasing importance of digitization in health care, the paper examines how medical practitioners who are involved in the development of digital health technologies legitimate and criticize the implementation and use of digital health technologies. Adopting an institutional logics perspective, the study is based on qualitative interviews with persons working at the interface of medicine and digital technologies development in Switzerland. The findings indicate that the developers believe that digital health technologies could harmonize current conflicts between an increasing economization of the health care system and professional–ethical demands. At the same time, however, they show that digital technologies can undermine the demand for medical autonomy, a central element of the medical ethos.


10.2196/20579 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. e20579
Author(s):  
Leah Taylor Kelley ◽  
Jamie Fujioka ◽  
Kyle Liang ◽  
Madeline Cooper ◽  
Trevor Jamieson ◽  
...  

Background Health systems are increasingly looking toward the private sector to provide digital solutions to address health care demands. Innovation in digital health is largely driven by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), yet these companies experience significant barriers to entry, especially in public health systems. Complex and fragmented care models, alongside a myriad of relevant stakeholders (eg, purchasers, providers, and producers of health care products), make developing value propositions for digital solutions highly challenging. Objective This study aims to identify areas for health system improvement to promote the integration of innovative digital health technologies developed by SMEs. Methods This paper qualitatively analyzes a series of case studies to identify health system barriers faced by SMEs developing digital health technologies in Canada and proposed solutions to encourage a more innovative ecosystem. The Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care established a consultation program for SMEs to help them increase their innovation capacity and take their ideas to market. The consultation involved the SME filling out an onboarding form and review of this information by an expert advisory committee using guided considerations, leading to a recommendation report provided to the SME. This paper reports on the characteristics of 25 SMEs who completed the program and qualitatively analyzed their recommendation reports to identify common barriers to digital health innovation. Results A total of 2 central themes were identified, each with 3 subthemes. First, a common barrier to system integration was the lack of formal evaluation, with SMEs having limited resources and opportunities to conduct such an evaluation. Second, the health system’s current structure does not create incentives for clinicians to use digital technologies, which threatens the sustainability of SMEs’ business models. SMEs faced significant challenges in engaging users and payers from the public system due to perverse economic incentives. Physicians are compensated by in-person visits, which actively works against the goals of many digital health solutions of keeping patients out of clinics and hospitals. Conclusions There is a significant disconnect between the economic incentives that drive clinical behaviors and the use of digital technologies that would benefit patients’ well-being. To encourage the use of digital health technologies, publicly funded health systems need to dedicate funding for the evaluation of digital solutions and streamlined pathways for clinical integration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dror Ben-Zeev ◽  
Benjamin Buck ◽  
Sarah Kopelovich ◽  
Suzanne Meller

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.


Author(s):  
Elena Stepanovna Ustinovich

The purpose of this article is to study the eff ectiveness of using digitalization in national health care. The article outlines the main advantages of using digital technologies in healthcare. The article also shows which areas of digitalization of healthcare are used in the Russian Federation. In addition, it is described that medical centers should carry out remote monitoring of patients in order to prevent critical conditions. This article outlines the benefi ts of digitalizing healthcare and its main directions. Today, the transition of Russian healthcare to an innovative digital platform is an urgent task. Digitalization of healthcare is a prerequisite for the development of this industry. In addition, such a process serves as a major factor in economic and social progress. Digital technologies are one of the priorities for the development of the healthcare sector. Every year this area is increasing by a quarter. The digitalization process will help provide a breakthrough in the availability and quality of services without increasing healthcare costs. Several information projects have been implemented in the Russian Federation over the past few years.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iacopo Rubbio ◽  
Manfredi Bruccoleri ◽  
Astrid Pietrosi ◽  
Barbara Ragonese

PurposeIn the healthcare management domain, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the role of resilience practices in improving patient safety. The purpose of this paper is to understand the capabilities that enable healthcare resilience and how digital technologies can support these capabilities.Design/methodology/approachWithin- and cross-case research methodology was used to study resilience mechanisms and capabilities in healthcare and to understand how digital health technologies impact healthcare resilience. The authors analyze data from two Italian hospitals through the lens of the operational failure literature and anchor the findings to the theory of dynamic capabilities.FindingsFive different dynamic capabilities emerged as crucial for managing operational failure. Furthermore, in relation to these capabilities, medical, organizational and patient-related knowledge surfaced as major enablers. Finally, the findings allowed the authors to better explain the role of knowledge in healthcare resilience and how digital technologies boost this role.Practical implicationsWhen trying to promote a culture of patient safety, the research suggests healthcare managers should focus on promoting and enhancing resilience capabilities. Furthermore, when evaluating the role of digital technologies, healthcare managers should consider their importance in enabling these dynamic capabilities.Originality/valueAlthough operations management (OM) research points to resilience as a crucial behavior in the supply chain, this is the first research that investigates the concept of resilience in healthcare systems from an OM perspective, with only a few authors having studied similar concepts, such as “workaround” practices.


2021 ◽  
pp. 191-205
Author(s):  
Michelle Crouthamel ◽  
Robert J. Mather ◽  
Suraj Ramachandran ◽  
Kai Bode ◽  
Godhuli Chatterjee ◽  
...  

The development of novel digital endpoints (NDEs) using digital health technologies (DHTs) may provide opportunities to transform drug development. It requires a multidisciplinary, multi-study approach with strategic planning and a regulatory-guided pathway to achieve regulatory and clinical acceptance. Many NDEs have been explored; however, success has been limited. To advance industry use of NDEs to support drug development, we outline a theoretical, methodological study as a use-case proposal to describe the process and considerations when developing and obtaining regulatory acceptance for an NDE to assess sleep in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA patients often suffer joint pain, fatigue, and sleep disturbances (SDs). Although many researchers have investigated the mobility of joint functions using wearable technologies, the research of SD in RA has been limited due to the availability of suitable technologies. We proposed measuring the improvement of sleep as the novel endpoint for an anti-TNF therapy and described the meaningfulness of the measure, considerations of tool selection, and the design of clinical validation. The recommendations from the FDA patient-focused drug development guidance, the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) pathway for developing novel endpoints from DHTs, and the V3 framework developed by the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) have been incorporated in the proposal. Regulatory strategy and engagement pathways are also discussed.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1517
Author(s):  
Saeed M. Alghamdi ◽  
Abdullah S. Alsulayyim ◽  
Jaber S. Alqahtani ◽  
Abdulelah M. Aldhahir

COVID-19 poses a significant burden to healthcare systems. Healthcare organisations with better health innovation infrastructures have faced a reduced burden and achieved success in curbing COVID-19. In Saudi Arabia, digital technologies have played a vital role in fighting SARS-CoV-2 transmission. In this paper, we aimed to summarise the experience of optimising digital health technologies in Saudi Arabia as well as to discuss capabilities and opportunities during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. A literature search was conducted up to September 2021 to document the experience of using DHTPs in Saudi Arabia in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. We also considered any published data, press briefings, and announcements by the MOH in Saudi Arabia. The findings were synthesised in narrative form. Health officials succeeded in optimising and maintaining a strategy to mitigate the spread of the virus via different digital technologies, such as mobile health applications, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The quick digital response in Saudi Arabia was facilitated by governmental support and by considering users and technology determinants. Future research must concentrate on establishing and updating the guidelines for using DHTPs.


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