Divergent Sectors, Merging Routes
Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Making Digital Health Access a Rights Issue?
Stay-at-home orders, fear of COVID-19, and concern for overburdened staff all contribute to patients opting out of visits with clinicians. The telemedicine industry is experiencing an incredible boon to their sector, so much so that some providers’ infrastructure has struggled to keep up with demand. With an increasing number of patients opting to use this medium for care and the heightened likelihood of future pandemics, will access to digital health become a human right?
Different Actors, Shared Goals
Over the years, there have been successful initiatives to increase digital access and calls to treat the internet as a public utility. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been working to close the digital access gap for at least a decade. On the international front, the U.N.’s Information and Communication Technologies Task Force laid the groundwork for bridging the digital divide in the Global South. Today, we find plenty of thoughtful innovators mindfully configuring products for offline operations.
Similarly, health access as a human right is not a new concept, and numerous stakeholders have made critical headway since the World Health Organization’s 1946 constitution. At least 32 nations boast some level of universal health coverage (UHC), which is the ability to access care without financial hardship. Well before the pandemic, organizations such as PATH
believed it impossible that UHC could be achieved without digital health integration. The evidence mounts when we consider the convenience of telemedicine weighed against the real cost (transport) and opportunity cost (losing a day’s work) of accessing healthcare in rural, last-mile communities.
Inflection Point
Despite the global pandemic, it will be difficult to convince lawmakers that digital health access is a human right when the concept of healthcare for all has little consensus. This is particularly acute in the U.S. where healthcare policy is politically fraught. This leaves human rights-based approaches to health policies at a critical juncture.
Considering barriers to digital health access, low-resource countries face a multitude of challenges. On the policy front, however, some of these countries are well-positioned for an expansion of digital health access. For example, SMS platforms for self-health and community-surveillance are increasingly common. mHealth is regular parlance in ministerial stakeholder meetings, and national digital health policies are increasingly commonplace. The political will is there but needs to be harnessed to surmount obstacles such as scaling broadband infrastructure, expanding connectivity outside of urban centers, securing cost of data use and sophisticated devices, and ensuring data privacy.
To continue to advance accessible digital health services, policy and advocacy efforts should be done in tandem with any and all universal healthcare initiatives. Digital access should be fully incorporated into rights-based policy frameworks and work plans. Health equity organizations are the best equipped to understand the needs of underserved populations and should be consulted throughout the process.
Paths Align
The next challenge for digital access advocates is to reimagine work in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 turned health services, education, and employment remote overnight, yet the majority of the world remains offline. It is critical for digital access to be advocated for within the framework of healthcare for all toward the right to health.
Data is still being collated, but we have anecdotal evidence that there are far more deaths from treatable diseases during the pandemic than the same period last year. This dynamic is at play in every region of the world. For human rights campaigners, preventable deaths are a moral issue. Accordingly, digital access champions are correct to frame the lack of access to digital healthcare as an issue of injustice and health inequity. The real work begins when stakeholders, even those with competing interests, can view digital health access as a common goal. Buy-in from policymakers will also be a crucial ingredient for success. Countries that have already achieved UHC are well-positioned to lead this effort.
The COVID-19 pandemic drove new health technologies to market with urgency. Regulatory processes that innovators had been surmounting for years were expeditiously cleared away to accommodate the increased need for telemedicine. If the threat of new pandemics is here to stay, calls to expand digital access to healthcare aren’t going anywhere, either.
Natasha Buksh is the Assistant Director of Global Health Policy and Human Rights at the University of Chicago. She was a 2014–2015 Global Health Corps fellow.
Global Health Corps (GHC) is a leadership development organization building the next generation of health equity leaders around the world. All GHC fellows, partners, and supporters are united in a common belief: health is a human right. There is a role for everyone in the movement for health equity. To learn more, visit our website and connect with us on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook.
