Praveen Indraratna, Uzzal Biswas, Jennifer Yu, Guenter Schreier, Sze-Yuan Ooi, Nigel H Lovell, Stephen J Redmond
{"title":"Trials and Tribulations: mHealth Clinical Trials in the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Praveen Indraratna, Uzzal Biswas, Jennifer Yu, Guenter Schreier, Sze-Yuan Ooi, Nigel H Lovell, Stephen J Redmond","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726487","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Mobile phone-based interventions in cardiovascular disease are growing in popularity. A randomised control trial (RCT) for a novel smartphone app-based model of care, named TeleClinical Care - Cardiac (TCC-Cardiac), commenced in February 2019, targeted at patients being discharged after care for an acute coronary syndrome or episode of decompensated heart failure. The app was paired to a digital sphygmomanometer, weighing scale and a wearable fitness band, all loaned to the patient, and allowed clinicians to respond to abnormal readings. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated several modifications to the trial in order to protect participants from potential exposure to infection. The use of TCC-Cardiac during the pandemic inspired the development of a similar model of care (TCC-COVID), targeted at patients being managed at home with a diagnosis of COVID-19.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Recruitment for the TCC-Cardiac trial was terminated shortly after the World Health Organization announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Telephone follow-up was commenced, in order to protect patients from unnecessary exposure to hospital staff and patients. Equipment was returned or collected by a 'no-contact' method. The TCC-COVID app and model of care had similar functionality to the original TCC-Cardiac app. Participants were enrolled exclusively by remote methods. Oxygen saturation and pulse rate were measured by a pulse oximeter, and symptomatology measured by questionnaire. Measurement results were manually entered into the app and transmitted to an online server for medical staff to review.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 164 patients were involved in the TCC-Cardiac trial, with 102 patients involved after the onset of the pandemic. There were no hospitalisations due to COVID-19 in this cohort. The study was successfully completed, with only three participants lost to follow-up. During the pandemic, 5 of 49 (10%) of patients in the intervention arm were readmitted compared to 12 of 53 (23%) in the control arm. Also, in this period, 28 of 29 (97%) of all clinically significant alerts received by the monitoring team were managed successfully in the outpatient setting, avoiding hospitalisation. Patients found the user experience largely positive, with the average rating for the app being 4.56 out of 5. 26 patients have currently been enrolled for TCC-COVID. Recruitment is ongoing. All patients have been safely and effectively monitored, with no major adverse clinical events or technical malfunctions. Patient satisfaction has been high.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The TCC-Cardiac RCT was successfully completed despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. Use of the app had an added benefit during the pandemic as participants could be monitored safely from home. The model of care inspired the development of an app with similar functionality designed for use with patients diagnosed with COVID-19.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"272-279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1055/s-0041-1726487","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38895226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Clinical Information Systems Research in the Pandemic Year 2020.","authors":"W O Hackl, A Hoerbst","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726516","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>In this synopsis, we give an overview of recent research and propose a selection of best papers published in 2020 in the field of Clinical Information Systems (CIS).</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>As CIS section editors, we annually apply a systematic process to retrieve articles for the International Medical Informatics Association Yearbook of Medical Informatics. For seven years now, we use the same query to find relevant publications in the CIS field. Each year we retrieve more than 2,400 papers which we categorize in a multi-pass review to distill a preselection of 15 candidate papers. External reviewers and yearbook editors then assess the selected candidate papers. Based on the review results, the IMIA Yearbook editorial board chooses up to four best publications for the section at a selection meeting. To get an overview of the content of the retrieved articles, we use text mining and term co-occurrence mapping techniques.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We carried out the query in mid-January 2021 and retrieved a deduplicated result set of 2,787 articles from 1,135 different journals. We nominated 15 papers as candidates and finally selected four of them as the best papers in the CIS section. As in the previous years, the content analysis of the articles revealed the broad spectrum of topics covered by CIS research. Thus, this year we could observe a significant impact of COVID-19 on CIS research.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The trends in CIS research, as seen in recent years, continue to be observable. What was very visible was the impact of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has affected not only our lives but also CIS.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"134-140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f0/90/10-1055-s-0041-1726516.PMC8416225.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39381743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Knowledge Representation and Management: Interest in New Solutions for Ontology Curation.","authors":"Ferdinand Dhombres, Jean Charlet","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726508","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To select, present and summarize some of the best papers in the field of Knowledge Representation and Management (KRM) published in 2020.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A comprehensive and standardized review of the medical informatics literature was performed to select the most interesting papers of KRM published in 2020, based on PubMed queries. This review was conducted according to the IMIA Yearbook guidelines.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Four best papers were selected among 1,175 publications. In contrast with the papers selected last year, the four best papers of 2020 demonstrated a significant focus on methods and tools for ontology curation and design. The usual KRM application domains (bioinformatics, machine learning, and electronic health records) were also represented.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>In 2020, ontology curation emerges as a significant topic of research interest. Bioinformatics, machine learning, and electronics health records remain significant research areas in the KRM community with various applications. Knowledge representations are key to advance machine learning by providing context and to develop novel bioinformatics metrics. As in 2019, representations serve a great variety of applications across many medical domains, with actionable results and now with growing adhesion to the open science initiative.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"185-190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/fb/dc/10-1055-s-0041-1726508.PMC8416227.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39381749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tilman Dingler, Dominika Kwasnicka, Jing Wei, Enying Gong, Brian Oldenburg
{"title":"The Use and Promise of Conversational Agents in Digital Health.","authors":"Tilman Dingler, Dominika Kwasnicka, Jing Wei, Enying Gong, Brian Oldenburg","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726510","DOIUrl":"10.1055/s-0041-1726510","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>To describe the use and promise of conversational agents in digital health-including health promotion andprevention-and how they can be combined with other new technologies to provide healthcare at home.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A narrative review of recent advances in technologies underpinning conversational agents and their use and potential for healthcare and improving health outcomes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>By responding to written and spoken language, conversational agents present a versatile, natural user interface and have the potential to make their services and applications more widely accessible. Historically, conversational interfaces for health applications have focused mainly on mental health, but with an increase in affordable devices and the modernization of health services, conversational agents are becoming more widely deployed across the health system. We present our work on context-aware voice assistants capable of proactively engaging users and delivering health information and services. The proactive voice agents we deploy, allow us to conduct experience sampling in people's homes and to collect information about the contexts in which users are interacting with them.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>In this article, we describe the state-of-the-art of these and other enabling technologies for speech and conversation and discuss ongoing research efforts to develop conversational agents that \"live\" with patients and customize their service offerings around their needs. These agents can function as 'digital companions' who will send reminders about medications and appointments, proactively check in to gather self-assessments, and follow up with patients on their treatment plans. Together with an unobtrusive and continuous collection of other health data, conversational agents can provide novel and deeply personalized access to digital health care, and they will continue to become an increasingly important part of the ecosystem for future healthcare delivery.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"191-199"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/13/cb/10-1055-s-0041-1726510.PMC8416202.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39381750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Egoitz Laparra, Aurelie Mascio, Sumithra Velupillai, Timothy Miller
{"title":"A Review of Recent Work in Transfer Learning and Domain Adaptation for Natural Language Processing of Electronic Health Records.","authors":"Egoitz Laparra, Aurelie Mascio, Sumithra Velupillai, Timothy Miller","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726522","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>We survey recent work in biomedical NLP on building more adaptable or generalizable models, with a focus on work dealing with electronic health record (EHR) texts, to better understand recent trends in this area and identify opportunities for future research.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We searched PubMed, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) anthology, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) proceedings, and Google Scholar for the years 2018-2020. We reviewed abstracts to identify the most relevant and impactful work, and manually extracted data points from each of these papers to characterize the types of methods and tasks that were studied, in which clinical domains, and current state-of-the-art results.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The ubiquity of pre-trained transformers in clinical NLP research has contributed to an increase in domain adaptation and generalization-focused work that uses these models as the key component. Most recently, work has started to train biomedical transformers and to extend the fine-tuning process with additional domain adaptation techniques. We also highlight recent research in cross-lingual adaptation, as a special case of adaptation.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>While pre-trained transformer models have led to some large performance improvements, general domain pre-training does not always transfer adequately to the clinical domain due to its highly specialized language. There is also much work to be done in showing that the gains obtained by pre-trained transformers are beneficial in real world use cases. The amount of work in domain adaptation and transfer learning is limited by dataset availability and creating datasets for new domains is challenging. The growing body of research in languages other than English is encouraging, and more collaboration between researchers across the language divide would likely accelerate progress in non-English clinical NLP.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"239-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/7d/bc/10-1055-s-0041-1726522.PMC8416218.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39384484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Findings from the 2021 Yearbook Section on Health Information Management.","authors":"Meryl Bloomrosen, Eta S Berner","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726501","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2020 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A systematic review of the literature for the IMIA Yearbook HIM section was performed by the two section editors with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH headings and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of the fifteen best candidate papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The three major themes of Health Information Exchange (transmitting, sharing, and accessing patient health-related data and information) (HIE), Data Quality, and Privacy and Security make up 80% of the fifteen papers, with individual papers on personal health records, information governance and the professionalism of the HIM field.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Traditional HIM concerns about HIM practice and workforce as well as issues about the data in electronic health records (EHRs) including data quality, coding, health information exchange among entities within the healthcare systems and privacy and confidentiality continue to be a large part of the HIM research literature. Although there was little research applying these themes to pandemic concerns, HIM professionals have the expertise to make ccontributions to public health informatics research and this research would benefit from their involvement.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"84-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/5c/1c/10-1055-s-0041-1726501.PMC8416205.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39382242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Keep Moving Forward: Health Informatics and Information Management beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Barbara L Massoudi, Diana Sobolevskaia","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726499","url":null,"abstract":"Summary Objectives: To identify gaps and challenges in health informatics and health information management during the COVID-19 pandemic. To describe solutions and offer recommendations that can address the identified gaps and challenges. Methods: A literature review of relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature published from January 2020 to December 2020 was conducted to inform the paper. Results: The literature revealed several themes regarding health information management and health informatics challenges and gaps: information systems and information technology infrastructure; data collection, quality, and standardization; and information governance and use. These challenges and gaps were often driven by public policy and funding constraints. Conclusions: COVID-19 exposed complexities related to responding to a world-wide, fast moving, quickly spreading novel virus. Longstanding gaps and ongoing challenges in the local, national, and global health and public health information systems and data infrastructure must be addressed before we are faced with another global pandemic.","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"75-83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/cc/1e/10-1055-s-0041-1726499.PMC8416200.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39382243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Human Factors and Organizational Issues Section Synopsis IMIA Yearbook 2021.","authors":"Yalini Senathirajah, Michelle Hribar","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726524","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To select the best papers that made original and high impact contributions in the area of human factors and organizational issues in biomedical informatics in 2020.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A rigorous extraction process based on queries from Web of Science® and PubMed/Medline was conducted to identify the scientific contributions published in 2020 that address human factors and organizational issues in biomedical informatics. The screening of papers on titles and abstracts independently by the two section editors led to a total of 1,562 papers. These papers were discussed for a selection of 12 finalist papers, which were then reviewed by the two section editors, two chief editors, and by three external reviewers from internationally renowned research teams.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The query process resulted in 12 papers that reveal interesting and rigorous methods and important studies in human factors that move the field forward, particularly in clinical informatics and emerging technologies such as brain-computer interfaces. This year three papers were clearly outstanding and help advance in the field. They provide examples of applying existing frameworks together in novel and highly illuminating ways, showing the value of theory development in human factors. Emerging themes included several which discussed physician burnout, mobile health, and health equity. Those concerning the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) were included as part of that section.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The selected papers make important contributions to human factors and organizational issues, expanding and deepening our knowledge of how to apply theory and applications of new technologies in health.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"100-104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/1e/7b/10-1055-s-0041-1726524.PMC8416209.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39382245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mapping the Role of Digital Health Technologies in Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic: Review of the Literature.","authors":"Binyam Tilahun, Kassahun Dessie Gashu, Zeleke Abebaw Mekonnen, Berhanu Fikadie Endehabtu, Dessie Abebaw Angaw","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726505","DOIUrl":"10.1055/s-0041-1726505","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) is currently spreading exponentially around the globe. Various digital health technologies are currently being used as weapons in the fight against the pandemic in different ways by countries. The main objective of this review is to explore the role of digital health technologies in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and address the gaps in the use of these technologies for tackling the pandemic.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We conducted a scoping review guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines. The articles were searched using electronic databases including MEDLINE (PubMed), Cochrane Library, and Hinari. In addition, Google and Google scholar were searched. Studies that focused on the application of digital health technologies on COVID-19 prevention and control were included in the review. We characterized the distribution of technological applications based on geographical locations, approaches to apply digital health technologies and main findings. The study findings from the existing literature were presented using thematic content analysis.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 2,601 potentially relevant studies were generated from the initial search and 22 studies were included in the final review. The review found that telemedicine was used most frequently, followed by electronic health records and other digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet of things (IoT). Digital health technologies were used in multiple ways in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including screening and management of patients, methods to minimize exposure, modelling of disease spread, and supporting overworked providers.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Digital health technologies like telehealth, mHealth, electronic medical records, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and big data/internet were used in different ways for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in different settings using multiple approaches. For more effective deployment of digital health tools in times of pandemics, development of a guiding policy and standard on the development, deployment, and use of digital health tools in response to a pandemic is recommended.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"26-37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/d4/c7/10-1055-s-0041-1726505.PMC8416203.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39382241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sabine Koch, William R Hersh, Riccardo Bellazzi, Tze Yun Leong, Moctar Yedaly, Najeeb Al-Shorbaji
{"title":"Digital Health during COVID-19: Informatics Dialogue with the World Health Organization.","authors":"Sabine Koch, William R Hersh, Riccardo Bellazzi, Tze Yun Leong, Moctar Yedaly, Najeeb Al-Shorbaji","doi":"10.1055/s-0041-1726480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1726480","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>On December 16, 2020 representatives of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), a Non-Governmental Organization in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO), along with its International Academy for Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), held an open dialogue with WHO Director General (WHO DG) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the opportunities and challenges of digital health during the COVID-19 global pandemic.</p><p><strong>Objectives: </strong>The aim of this paper is to report the outcomes of the dialogue and discussions with more than 200 participants representing different civil society organizations (CSOs).</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The dialogue was held in form of a webinar. After an initial address of the WHO DG, short presentations by the panelists, and live discussions between panelists, the WHO DG and WHO representatives took place. The audience was able to post questions in written. These written discussions were saved with participants' consent and summarized in this paper.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The main themes that were brought up by the audience for discussion were: (a) opportunities and challenges in general; (b) ethics and artificial intelligence; (c) digital divide; (d) education. Proposed actions included the development of a roadmap based on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Decision making by policy makers needs to be evidence-based and health informatics research should be used to support decisions surrounding digital health, and we further propose next steps in the collaboration between IMIA and WHO such as future engagement in the World Health Assembly.</p>","PeriodicalId":40027,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of medical informatics","volume":"30 1","pages":"13-16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1055/s-0041-1726480","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38894881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}