Online Journal of Public Health Informatics

Our article provides a viewpoint on population digital health - the use of digital health information sourced from Health IoT and wearable devices for population health modeling - as an emerging research initiative for offering an integrated approach for continuous monitoring and profiling of diseases and health conditions at multiple spatial resolutions. Global healthcare systems are increasingly challenged by rising costs as life expectancy and the average age of people increases. Population digital health looks at how wearables, IoT, and AI can offer an alternative approach for understanding health issues within the population, significantly reducing cost and improving the completeness of information collection by current practices, such as electronic health records - including integration with mhealth personal health records - or survey instruments. This significantly improves our collective understanding of public health priorities, including factors affecting disease prevalence, occurrence and risk factors, ultimately helping to design targeted programmatic interventions apt at reducing the cost of healthcare provision and leading to better life quality, also reducing disparities. Realizing this vision requires overcoming several unique challenges, including data quality, availability, sparsity, and social and technical barriers in the use of health technologies. Our article highlights these challenges and offers solutions and empirical evidence to demonstrate how these challenges can be addressed. As population digital health addresses the impact large-scale sensor data collection and AI can have on improving healthcare delivery and society, we sincerely believe the topic is well within the journal's scope and would be highly interesting to its readership. Our experiments using a combination of real-world health IoT data and electronic health records also highlight the potential cross-disciplinary benefits of population digital health and challenge the research community to address the vision and challenges. Therefore, our article serves the dual purpose of challenging the research community and offering insights into the use of AI and sensor data, and how population digital health can serve as a catalyst for further research by the broader research community.

On average, people in the United States visit a doctor 4 times a year, and many of them have chronic illnesses. Because of the increased use of technology, people frequently rely on the internet to access health information and statistics. People use health care information to make better-educated decisions for themselves and others. Health care dashboards should provide pertinent and easily understood data, such as information on timely cancer screenings, so the public can make better-informed decisions. In order to enhance health outcomes, effective dashboards should provide precise data in an accessible and easily digestible manner.

Digital health is a new health field initiative. Health professionals require security in digital places because cybercriminals target them. Millions of medical records were breached for money by criminals. In terms of digital security, there is a gap in studies in limited-resource countries. Therefore, conducting a study on health professionals’ attitudes toward digital health data security has a significant purpose for interventions.

Contact tracing was implemented in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent disease spread, reduce mortality, and avoid overburdening health care systems. In several countries, including Germany, new systems were needed to trace potentially infected individuals.

There is an emerging need for evidence-based approaches harnessing large amounts of health care data and novel technologies (such as artificial intelligence) to optimize public health policy making.

Our objective was to evaluate the CANImmunize digital solution and measure the impact on workflow and appointment booking at Bruyère Hospital.

e-Pharmacy can potentially solve problems related to the quality of services and products, cost, and access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries. This review aims to understand the facilitators and barriers to the implementation of e-pharmacy in India.

Vaccination services are increasingly in demand by the public, and mobile apps are an effective tool to meet that demand. However, the characteristics and quality of these apps are unknown.

Eye care organizations and professionals worldwide are increasingly focusing on bridging the gap between population health and medical practice. Recent advances in genomics and anthropology have revealed that most Indian groups trace their ancestry to a blend of 2 genetically distinct populations: Ancestral North Indians, who share genetic affinities with Central Asians, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Europeans; and Ancestral South Indians, genetically distinct from groups outside the Indian subcontinent. Studies conducted among North Indian populations can therefore offer insights that are potentially applicable to these diverse global populations, underscoring significant implications for global health.

Consideration of ethics in the promotion of medications is essential to safeguard the health of consumers, particularly during health crises. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) have established stringent standards to ensure the integrity of pharmaceutical promotions and safeguard public health, including advertisements on the internet and social media platforms. However, the dynamic nature of online advertising poses challenges for monitoring and enforcing ethical standards.

The number of opioid-related deaths in the United States has more than tripled over the past 7 years, with a steep increase beginning at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an urgent need for novel treatment options that can help alleviate the individual and social effects of refractory opioid use disorder (OUD). Deep brain stimulation (DBS), an intervention that involves implanting electrodes in the brain to deliver electrical impulses, is one potential treatment. Currently in clinical trials for many psychiatric conditions, including OUD, DBS’s use for psychiatric indications is not without controversy. Several studies have examined ethical issues raised by using DBS to counter treatment-resistant depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders. In contrast, there has been limited literature regarding the use of DBS for OUD.

Vaccine hesitancy is a growing global health threat that is increasingly studied through the monitoring and analysis of social media platforms. One understudied area is the impact of echo chambers and influential users on disseminating vaccine information in social networks. Assessing the temporal development of echo chambers and the influence of key users on their growth provides valuable insights into effective communication strategies to prevent increases in vaccine hesitancy. This also aligns with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) infodemiology research agenda, which aims to propose new methods for social listening.