This month’s press review is devoted to digital health issues.
We’ve chosen to devote some time to these issues – which, let’s face it, we’re not specialists in – because of their growing importance: the crisis has both revealed and amplified them. While the use of digital technologies has become an integral part of our lives in the space of just a few months, the healthcare sector has been particularly affected by these new practices.
Working with experts in the field, including Florence Gaudry Perkins, we not only looked at the conceptual, technical, scientific and ethical issues at stake, but also, as you will see in this note, at the challenges of global governance of digital health.
As usual, in this selection you will find links to reference documents, including the United Nations‘strategy 2020-2025, the Broadband Commission report, the latest edition of the Global Innovation Index and scientific articles, such as those by the joint Lancet / Financial Times Commission on “ Growing up in a digital world ”.
Telemedicine andartificial intelligence obviously occupy a special place in this collection, with a focus both onOECD countries and on the specificities of low-income countries.
Adopting a broad definition, which sees digital health as the use of digital technologies for health purposes, we have selected a series of concrete examples of the use of digital tools:
- E-health : information systems, computerized patient records, etc.
- Telehealth: remote consultations, particularly in the field of mental health, mobile applications, telemonitoring, connected devices (e.g. for monitoring newborn babies in connected incubators).
- In the field of healthcare data exploitation (big data and data mining) and artificial intelligence for healthcare.
Finally, we invite you to reflect on the ethical issues raised by the use of digital technology in healthcare: How can we ensure that healthcare data is not used for social and health control purposes? What international strategies should be put in place to regulate and evaluate the use of digital technology in health? Is “5P medicine” (preventive, personalized, predictive, participative and evidence-based) just talk? How can we respond to the democratic (and legitimate) demand for control over digital technologies? How can we ultimately control our digital space and ensure that digital health does indeed contribute to empowering patients over their own health? In short, how can we achieve what Claude Kirchner and Jérôme Perrin call a “ fraternal digital world”?