KEY 03 - Innovations in Digital Health

As the digital and genetics revolutions converge with healthcare into the exciting new field of Digital Health, we are increasingly able to track, manage, and improve both our own health and that of our loved ones. Digital Health is also helping to reduce inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, while at the same time streamlining access, improving quality and making medicine more personalized and precise.

The essential elements that are making the digital health revolution a reality include wireless devices, hardware and software sensing technologies, the Internet, social networking, mobile and body area networks, health information systems, and genomic medicine.
Like any tool, Digital Health is by itself neutral. It can either bring us closer to universal health care, or deepen the divide between the rich and the destitute, the developed and the under-developed. We need to understand how to steer Digital Health to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages and in all regions of the world. Advances are needed in issues like choosing which technologies should (and should not) be used by national health care systems in regions at different levels of development, on how to control complexity, and keep costs under control.
Digital Health is probably the most important factor that will shape healthcare delivery in the years to come.