'DIgital Healthcare' has been a sort of a 'buzzword', starting from last decade. We can easily find this word in a news that introduces Apple watch, in investment websites, from government statements, and even from your insurance company.
So what exactly is 'Digital Healthcare'? We tend to talk about things, even when we don't know what it is exactly about. This isn't bad because I haven't known it too, even though I was interested in it for over three years. Well, let's find out together.
First, I think it would be logical to point out what 'Healthcare' is beforehand. A quick look at Wikipedia brought me this:
"Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people."
Also, 'Nature' says it like this:
"Health care is the discipline concerned with the provision and delivery of health services to a patient population by personnel in professional and allied health occupations."
In my opinion, what is important in this definition is that it is aimed at 'people' and 'population', rather than individuals. It is therefore a bit different from the medicinal practice itself(more specifically, healthcare includes medicinal practice). Wiki also points this out, by saying "Dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, medicine, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training and other health professions are all part of health care." If you read more, it also states another interesting definition:
"Providing health care services means "the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best possible health outcomes."
Keyword here is personal health services. This services includes, but not limited to, medicinal practice, nursing, therapy and training. So it seems that healthcare is about providing services to individual to keep the individual AND the overall population's health maintenance and improvement.
Although we couldn't possibly know about Healthcare in every detail, I think we could grasp the overall concept of it by now. Then, what is 'Digital Healthcare?" How doesn 'Digital' play a role in this scheme?
As we can somewhat easily suspect, 'Digital Healthcare' is a word that has not been used untill recently. So unlike healthcare, there are varying definitions between countries, organizations, and Academia. It a bit confusing, so let's start with organizations that are biggest and has the most influence: WHO.
"a broad umbrella term encompassing eHealth (which includes mHealth), as well as emerging areas, such as the use of advanced computing sciences in ‘big data’, genomics, and artificial intelligence."
As you can see, it is a very broad term that includes all existing 'digital' 'medicine' stuff, and the ones that might exist in the future. Next, let's see what FDA has to say:
"The broad scope of digital health includes categories such as mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalized medicine."
FDA emphathizes and specifies on the method and the device used in it. Maybe it's due to them having to license those things. For starters like us, this could be a great viewpoint.
There are numerous other definitions by other organizations, but I think the above two are the things that we can safely rely on. As one could have easily suspected, 'Digital healthcare' is healthcare deployed with IT based software and devices. We'll need a lot of time to look into specific things like personalized medicine(this is one BIG subject), but as starters, we can look into the details later.
Also, we have to take into account that the term 'Digital HealthCare' itself was started to be widely used only since 2014. The term(and the actual whole field) is in very early stage, and everyone's is still trying to establish a one, unified definition on what it is. So be in mind that the definitions in here can change in the course of time.
The point is, 'Digital healthcare' uses software and hardware to deploy health services. Ever since the iPhone was first introduced into the market(looking further, since the first commertialized personal computer was sold), software and mobile hardware has been growing and expanding at rates that we have never seen before. One can put it as 'explosion'. It invaded, changed, created many new services in our life. And now, by 'Digital medicine', it is showing itself on one of the most important and complex thing: Our body and our health.
Source
- www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health-center-excellence
Digital Health Center of Excellence
Information about CDRH's Digital Health Program
www.fda.gov
- www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/digital-interventions-health-system-strengthening/en/
WHO Guideline: recommendations on digital interventions for health system strengthening
www.who.int
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care#Health_system
Health care - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Prevention of disease and promotion of wellbeing Global concentrations of healthcare resources, as depicted by the number of physicians per 10,000 individuals, by country. Health care,
en.wikipedia.org
- sooyongshin.wordpress.com/2019/06/23/digital-health-1-%EC%A0%95%EC%9D%98/
Digital Health (1) – 정의
이번엔 digital health다. 디지털헬스학과 교수임에도 불구하고.. 디지털헬스가 뭐냐? 라고 물으면 참 대답하기 애매했다.. (막간 홍보.. 국내 최초의 디지털헬스학과.. 성균관대학교 삼성융합의
sooyongshin.wordpress.com
- 『Deep medicine: how artificial intelligence can make healthcare human again』 Eric Topol, Tranlated to Korean
- 『디지털 헬스케어: 의료의 미래』 최윤섭 지음, 클라우드나인
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