Digital Health: A New Frontier

Abstract

The Food and Drug Administration defines digital health (DH) as “a convergence of people, information, technology, and connectivity to improve health care and health outcomes”. Information and communication technologies are categorized under the DH umbrella. While still in their infancy, these technologies have great potential to revolutionize the clinical approaches to bedside management and overall health care. Over the past few decades, there has been a substantial improvement in the technology in smart wearable devices that enabled them to enhance their abilities to collect patient-related data, including physiological and behavioral information in the Internet of things. This has resulted in implementing several controlled clinical trials that have confirmed their validity and safety. These digital diagnostics have led to the expansion of digital therapies and specialized software (for example, apps) capable of effectively and measurably guiding patients’ progress toward improving their clinical condition. These technologies are clinically validated treatments for many diseases with particular effectiveness in pathological conditions related to behavior and psychological factors. In this review paper, we describe the outlines of some of the recent progress made in this field.