What IS Digital Health?
Does your inquiring mind want to know: what IS digital health? ⠀
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I realized that I so often use this term in my day-to-day work and life that I forget it's new and even foreign to others! Sit down, grab a warm beverage, and read along. ⠀
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Digital Health is an umbrella term to describe a variety of products, tools, and services to deliver healthcare utilizing technology. ⠀
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A few examples of these are: ⠀
• Wearable/ connected devices and associate apps like Fitbit , Apple watches, blood pressure cuffs, scales, glucometers, fertility trackers like Ava Women and more! ⠀
• Some digital health apps are standalone like many medication adherence apps, nutrition logging apps like My Fitness Pal, mental health and mindfulness apps like Headspace and period trackers like Flo. ⠀
• Digital Therapeutic is a specific sector of digital health that is focused on evidenced-based interventions that have undergone randomized control trials (the gold standard in clinical research) and have proved effective as complimentary to drug therapies or in place of. Pear Therapeutics is the leader in this area. ⠀
• Telehealth is often lumped into digital care but there are multiple sub categories as well. I think of the digital health components being video calls (with or without connected devices) between a doctor and a patient.
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• Some news outlets have been grouping fitness companies like Peleton into digital health but seems like a stretch to me... ⠀
• Finally websites that provide health advice and information to consumers, such as WebMD, are also often lumped into digital health! ⠀
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So as you can see, it's a very broad and diverse field. There is a sister industry called Health IT, and to me that is more related to the business of doing healthcare. I'd put EHR vendors, cloud data services, hospital-based internet enabled devices, etc. into this bucket.
I’ve been enamored with digital health since 2010. If you have questions, feel free to drop me an email at wellmadhealth@gmail.com
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