Dr. Garrett Mehl, Scientist, Digital Innovation and Research, WHO says: “Digital interventions depend heavily on the context and ensuring appropriate design. This includes structural issues in the settings where they are being used, available infrastructure, health needs they are trying to address, and the ease of use of the technology itself.” Importantly, it must be noted that: “Digital health interventions are not sufficient on their own.”
Dr. Oommen John, Senior Research Fellow, George Institute says, India is a hub for digital health innovations, however very few of these innovations have achieved the scale for impact within the health systems. It is important therefore to pause, reflect and use the WHO digital health guidelines as framework of the innovation ecosystem in India and help guide energy and enthusiasm of the start-ups to develop, evaluate and implement digital health innovations that can help achieve the universal health coverage.
Ten recommendations for Digital Health Interventions:
- Birth notification via mobile devices, under certain conditions.
- Death notification via mobile devices, under certain conditions.
- Stock notification and commodity management, via mobile devicesin certain settings.
- Client-to-provider telemedicine, in specific contexts or conditions, tocomplement, rather than replace, the delivery of health services andin settings where patient safety, privacy, traceability, accountabilityand security can be monitored.
- Provider-to-provider telemedicine, in specific contexts or conditionsand in settings where patient safety, privacy, traceability, accountabilityand security can be monitored.
- Targeted client communication via mobile devices, in specific contextsor conditions, for health issues regarding sexual, reproductive,maternal, newborn, and child health under the condition thatpotential concerns about sensitive content and data privacy can beaddressed.
- Health worker decision support via mobile devices, in specific contextsor conditions, for community and facility-based health workers in thecontext of tasks that are already defined within the scope of practicefor the health worker.
- Digital tracking of clients’ health status and services (digital tracking)combined with decision support, in specific contexts or conditions,combined with decision support in defined conditions.
- Digital tracking combined with: (a) decision support and (b) targetedclient communication, in specific contexts or conditions, and indefined conditions.
- Digital provision of training and educational content to health workersvia mobile devices/mobile learning (mLearning), to complement,rather than replace, traditional methods of delivering continuedhealth education and post-certification training.
