Week 6: Digital Health
It is widely known that technology’s development has open doors for people into the information world of various fields such as education or economy. Recent years has seen a rapid surge of digital health into people lives, encouraging people to take better care of themselves and live healthier. So what is digital health and what are the effects of its on people’s health?
Digital health is defined to be technological advancement allowing people to approach health care information. For instance, social media, which is prominent for its capability of connecting people, has been proven to be the vital tool in health care information sharing. One of the cases to be mentioned would be how Dr. Carolina Camilo, a physiatrist in a pediatric burn unit in Santiago, Dominican Republic, finds the way to treat her young patient (Thompson, 2016). When being in the circumstance of having no one know how to “prevent her young patients from scarring and losing the use of their burned limbs”, Dr. Carolina Camilo decided to Facebook for help, and eventually she got the necessary information for the treatment after successfully connecting with PFP (Physicians for Peace) program director Leslie Toledo via the Facebook group (Thompson, 2016). Besides helping people connect with medical specialists and doctors, organizations such as PFP also provide online health care education courses on Facebook and Skype’s groups for people living in remote areas or where training isn’t available in order to globally build health care capacity.
We can not forget to mention self-tracking apps when discussing about digital health these days. With the rapid development of technology, a vast majority of health related applications have been developed, including sleep trackers, mood trackers, emotion trackers, and heart-rate variability measuring devices which allow people to observe and understand their personal health data as well as giving people recommendations based on their recorded living habits. An example of self-tracking apps is Meallogger, a visual food tracking application serving to share people daily meal picture which they can use to ask for health advice from heath care providers. These apps have been indicated to encourage people to monitor their health carefully and actively (Ruckenstein 2015).
While Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is proven to facilitate people health care and well-being, the lack of it in some areas is a concern needed to be dealt with. It is shown that the inability to access the Internet or can be called “digital divide” severely limits education, health and employment (Broadbent and Papadopoulos, 2013). Residents living in the Collingwood Housing Estate have reported that before having opportunities to access the Internet, they had low self-esteem and are less willing to participate in any social activities. Therefore, the uneven of accessibility is a problem which should be tackled with as soon as possible.
References:
Broadbent, R. and Papadopoulos, T. (2013). Bridging the digital divide — an Australian story. Behaviour & Information Technology, 32(1), pp.4–13.
Ruckenstein, M. (2015). Uncovering Everyday Rhythms and Patterns: Food tracking and new forms of visibility and temporality in health care. Techno-Anthropology in Health Informatics: Methodologies for Improving Human-Technology Relations, 215, 28–40.
Thompson, S. (2016). How Social Media Is Transforming Medical Care In The Developing World. [online] Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3057869/how-social-media-is-transforming-medical-care-in-the-developing-world?partner=rss&utm_content=buffera2b6a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Accessed 9 Sep. 2018].