Digital health generally refers to the use of internet solutions, big data, and communications technologies to collect, share and manage health information to improve both individual and public health, as well as identify symptoms, plan treatment, monitor key health parameters, and monitor progress and treatment effects. One aspect of digital health, namely telemedicine has grown rapidly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the efforts in this field were designed to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic and to ensure that healthcare delivery could continue as much as possible. With the rise in the development and use of digital health products, there is a need to understand their impact on healthcare. However, evidence supporting comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these products is limited. Regulatory policy on the adoption of digital health products is lacking and there is an absence of clear guidelines to evaluate their health and economic benefits in clinical practice for policy makers and developers. Similarly, policy environments remain unclear as to how digital health products are classified: do the policies for medical technologies also cover digital health or is digital health yet another archetype? Additionally, there are important considerations with regards to the impact of digital health on health inequalities due to digital exclusion. How can digital health tools be utilised in a way that it contributes to the improvement of health outcomes instead of widening existing divides?
LSE Health Digital focuses on providing clarity on these types of questions. We are a team of experts from the public and private sector, as well as academia. Our shared experience ranges from policy analyses and advising to health technology assessment and economic evaluations to exploring, understanding, and addressing health inequalities.
What do we do
In more specific terms, LSE Health Digital has four areas of interest:
-
Governance of digital health
-
Policy and regulatory options surrounding digital health
-
Economic evaluations and reimbursement processes of digital health tools and therapeutics
-
Digital health and health inequalities
Outputs
- Holly, L., Wong, B.L.H., van Kessel, R., Awah, I., Agrawal, A., Ndili, N., Optimising adolescent wellbeing in a digital age, BMJ 2023
- van Kessel R., Hrzic R., O'Nuallain E., Weir E., Wong B., Anderson M., Baron-Cohen S., Mossialos E., Digital Health Paradox: International Policy Perspectives to Address Increased Health Inequalities for People Living With Disabilities, J Med Internet Res 2022
- van Kessel R., Wong B. L. H., Forman R., Gabrani J., Mossialos E., The European Health Data Space fails to bridge digital divides, BMJ 2022
- van Kessel R., Kyriopoulos I., Wong B., Mossialos E., The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Digital Health–Seeking Behavior: Big Data Interrupted Time-Series Analysis of Google Trends, J Med Internet Res 2023
Who is involved
Dr Harpreet Sood
Health Education England
Dr Andres Roman-Urrestarazu
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge
For more information, please contact Dr Robin van Kessel at r.van-kessel@lse.ac.uk