This chapter reviews the digital inclusion policies and their effects on barriers to accessing healthcare, specifically focusing on digital health interventions and associated policies. The acceleration of technological advancement in the healthcare industry has facilitated considerable progress, including adopting virtual care delivery models such as telehealth and online care management, while exacerbating the inequities. Digital inclusion policies play a crucial role in addressing these inequities. The research questions guiding this study consider significant factors influencing digital healthcare delivery for patients and the impacts of digital health adoption on health equity within the Social Determinants of Health framework. The ethical and privacy challenges of digital health interventions and barriers to digital equity in resource-limited settings are explored. This paper highlights digital health inclusion policies and programs implemented globally by Governments. In conclusion, the chapter provides insights and recommendations for future policymaking.
TopIntroduction
According to the World Health Organization (2019), digital health or eHealth refers to the “cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies in support of health and health-related fields, including healthcare service, health surveillance, health literature, and health education, knowledge, and research.” This definition encompasses the basket of digital health, including apps and websites for health intervention, telehealth, and algorithms that provide input to machine decision outcomes, supported by data modeling based on statistical and neural modeling. The Healthcare industry has seen rapid adoption of digital collaborative tools across health constituents (Kwon et al., 2021).
Technology evolution in the last decade, since the regulation to enforce the Electronic Health Record (EHR) in 2009, has brought about numerous advancements in digital healthcare, leading to 95% of hospitals leveraging EHRs (Richardson et al., 2022). Dorsey (2021), in his research about the evolution of platforms for digital healthcare, highlights that care settings have been shifting from clinics and hospitals to homes. This shift has been due to advances in and access to technology, starting with the adoption of telemedicine. Integrating technology with healthcare has resulted in significant advancements, including the emergence of online care management and usage by all constituents in healthcare.
An interesting yet unexpected outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is the accelerated leverage of virtual care. This situation has helped to limit in-person interactions and prevent the transmission of the virus. However, not everyone benefited equally from virtual care. Some social groups faced more barriers and challenges in accessing and using virtual services, which worsened the existing disparities.
With COVID-19 impacting care delivery, many providers have rapidly adopted telehealth to deliver care remotely for multiple ailments (Fonda, 2020). Indeed, the Cleveland Clinic reported a growth in the adoption of telehealth by Twenty (20) times in one month (Mosnaim et al., 2020) and a hundred-fold spike among Medicare beneficiaries during COVID-19 in the same timespan (Verma, 2020).