Health IT Or Digital Health? The Gary-Rule Helps!

When it’s difficult to draw a line between health IT and digital health, the “Gary-rule” as a general rule of thumb could help. It means that any tech-related issue in a healthcare setting that Gary, the IT guy can solve belongs to health IT. On the other hand, problems in the medical-technological universe, which cannot get resolved without the involvement of other stakeholders of healthcare constitute the terrain of digital health, writes Dr. Meskó in his article published in the latest edition of the Journal of Clinical and Translational Research. The Gary-rule It’s hard to draw a definitive line between health IT and digital health issues, although delineating a clear territory for them might help caregivers use new technologies to improve and expedite their job so that in the end they may spend more time with patients. The two areas are often intermingled while their nature and the solution they require are different on many scales. In a nutshell, IT issues impact physicians’ everyday job the most but can be dealt with in the short term. Digital health has more impact on cultural changes and entails a long-term process. To make the difference crystal-clear for medical professionals, policy-makers or anyone interested in the future of healthcare, Dr. Meskó suggests using the Gary-rule. If a technological issue comes up in a healthcare setting such as the antivirus software becomes outdated or the electronic medical record system stopped working, and we have to...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Digital Health Research Policy Makers Researchers digital technology future health IT Healthcare online security wannacry Source Type: blogs