Situational Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on digital health research initiatives in South Asia
Abstract The objective of this paper was to evaluate and compare the quantity, and sustainability of digital health initiatives in the South Asia region pre-pandemic and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study used a two-step methodology of a) Descriptive analysis of digital health research articles published from 2016-21 from South Asia in terms of stratification of research articles based on diseases and conditions they were developed, geography, tasks wherein the initiative was applied. b) A simple and replicable tool was developed by authors to assess the sustainability of digital health initiatives using Experimental or Observational study designs. The results from descriptive analysis highlight; a) 40% increase in the number of studies report in 2020 when compared to 2019, b) The three most common diseases and conditions wherein substantive digital health research has been focused are Health Systems Strengthening, Ophthalmic Disorders, and COVID-19, c) Remote Consultation, Health Information delivery and Clinical Decision support systems are the top three commonly developed tools. We developed and estimated the inter-rater operability of the sustainability assessment tool was ascertained with a Kappa value of 0.806 (± 0.088). We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on digital health research with improvement in the number of digital health initiatives and improvement in sustainability score of studies published during COVID-19.