Digital Health as a life skill than an academic requirement
As medical knowledge and Information & communication technology continue to evolve significantly, a new phenomenon known as ‘digital health’ has begun to emerge. This is characterized as the application of information and communication technologies to the practice of healthcare delivery in order to control, prevent and cure diseases. As technological advancements converge with healthcare, the impact of digital health will continue to be prevalent. Digital tools have provided both patients and healthcare professionals with a great deal of benefits. Health care users have gained better control over their health, while getting better accessibility and availability of care. Digital health has enabled better decision making among the healthcare providers which has led to improved quality and safety of delivered care. Cumulatively, digital technology in the healthcare domain has improved its efficiency and effectiveness.
Demand from the health care professionals to work and use digital technologies is more than ever before. Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals are deemed to use digital health to deliver care on a daily basis. The scope of using these technologies will increase with time until we arrive at a virtual hospital environment. Therefore, it is essential for the students of the healthcare domain to have a solid foundation laid down with regard to knowledge on digital health. In that sense digital health has established its position in the academic curriculum in many biomedical sciences teaching programmes.
Another goal of digital health technologies is to lessen the administrative burden and other
repetitive components of the work that healthcare practitioners must perform. Many hospitals have started to collect patient data and treat patients based on realtime reports and AI-based patient monitoring tools. Artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of medicine can minimize time required to complete a task and identify the next steps depending on context, which decreases the workload for medical practitioners. The implementation of digital health is crucial for patients, clinics, or outpatient and even in home care settings where travel may be challenging. With the use of digital health systems, patients and their practitioners collaborate to create a patient’s care and treatment plan. The sense of partnership, trust, and openness between patient and doctor is heightened by the immediate, direct, and shared access to the patient’s present health status.
As citizens, digital health literacy is a good life skill to have in the
current context of time. Availability of mobile and web-based services rendering digital health care is in abundance. In this era, digital literacy is a given for many tiers of age. But to develop digital health literacy based on that is a challenge. It is essential that individuals have some knowledge about privacy, security and the elements of ‘trust’ in digital health care and the circumstances where digital health can be useful in the present-day society.
Health care is expected to become more personalised in the years to come. Therefore, the health care recipient will have a role to play when they are empowered to be responsible for their own health with the merging of digital technologies. In that sense it will be a life skill for all the citizens to have knowledge on dealing with digital healthcare technologies like wearable devices, Health care applications such as personal health records, the use of telemedicine and health knowledge available on social media and web. Aforementioned technologies like telemedicine and digital pharmacy services have demonstrated their values in the context of lockdown during the pandemic as well as during recent chaotic times in the country. Delivery of services were facilitated by many mobile applications that offer digital health services such as My Health Record in the Australian context and Doc990, oDoc, and Ayobolife in Sri lanka and many more across the world.
The prominence of wearable devices and health apps is also noticeable for people with chronic or medical conditions to track and monitor their progress and allows them to feel empowered when handling themselves. Moreover, we can see how health promotion is implemented in order to improve actions and outcomes related to physical and mental health via digital channels.
The use of digital technology in health plays a significant role by providing tools that allow better communication between Individuals and their health. The future of healthcare is intimately tied to the digital revolution, which has firmly cemented its presence in the healthcare industry. While it does provide various benefits for both recipient and provider in health care with the innovations, it is moving towards becoming a lifestyle requirement; giving individuals more authority over their health and wellbeing.