These 10 Trends will Define Digital Health in the Next Decade

By Wayan Vota, Director of digital health Smartphones have revolutionized the way health workers do business. Photo by Clement Tardif for IntraHealth International.January 30, 2020It’s been ten years since the first truly affordablesmartphone was introduced and unleashed a transformation across the African continent. These days, over 40% of all Africans use smartphones, and the technology generates 8.6% of GDP insub-Saharan Africa.But the tech transformation hasn’t stopped with telecommunications. The field of digital health has expanded, too. To kick off 2020, IntraHealth International’sdigital health team examined the existing health care ecosystem and emerging technologies to identify the trends we believe will define digital health over the next decade.1. Increasing data maturityFrom frontline health workers using data to improve their services, to health administrators using data to accurately deploy health resources; from clinics, to people, to commodities— these examples of using data in more sophisticated ways will be standard practice, not the innovations they’re seen as today. Data collection, sharing, and analysis practices will become more sophisticated. This trend is already obvious in the spread ofDHIS2, the move to facility- and patient-level data, and an increasing focus on health systemsinteroperability. By 2030, we hope to see widespreadmaturity in data use at all levels of the health system.2. Tensions between conven...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Digital Health Technology Source Type: news