TY - JOUR
T1 - Breaking down the Digital Fortress
T2 - The Unseen Challenges in Healthcare Technology—Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Research
AU - Keogh, Alison
AU - Argent, Rob
AU - Doherty, Cailbhe
AU - Duignan, Ciara
AU - Fennelly, Orna
AU - Purcell, Ciaran
AU - Johnston, William
AU - Caulfield, Brian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.
PY - 2024/6
Y1 - 2024/6
N2 - Healthcare is undergoing a fundamental shift in which digital health tools are becoming ubiquitous, with the promise of improved outcomes, reduced costs, and greater efficiency. Healthcare professionals, patients, and the wider public are faced with a paradox of choice regarding technologies across multiple domains. Research is continuing to look for methods and tools to further revolutionise all aspects of health from prediction, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. However, despite its promise, the reality of implementing digital health tools in practice, and the scalability of innovations, remains stunted. Digital health is approaching a crossroads where we need to shift our focus away from simply looking at developing new innovations to seriously considering how we overcome the barriers that currently limit its impact. This paper summarises over 10 years of digital health experiences from a group of researchers with backgrounds in physical therapy—in order to highlight and discuss some of these key lessons—in the areas of validity, patient and public involvement, privacy, reimbursement, and interoperability. Practical learnings from this collective experience across patient cohorts are leveraged to propose a list of recommendations to enable researchers to bridge the gap between the development and implementation of digital health tools.
AB - Healthcare is undergoing a fundamental shift in which digital health tools are becoming ubiquitous, with the promise of improved outcomes, reduced costs, and greater efficiency. Healthcare professionals, patients, and the wider public are faced with a paradox of choice regarding technologies across multiple domains. Research is continuing to look for methods and tools to further revolutionise all aspects of health from prediction, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. However, despite its promise, the reality of implementing digital health tools in practice, and the scalability of innovations, remains stunted. Digital health is approaching a crossroads where we need to shift our focus away from simply looking at developing new innovations to seriously considering how we overcome the barriers that currently limit its impact. This paper summarises over 10 years of digital health experiences from a group of researchers with backgrounds in physical therapy—in order to highlight and discuss some of these key lessons—in the areas of validity, patient and public involvement, privacy, reimbursement, and interoperability. Practical learnings from this collective experience across patient cohorts are leveraged to propose a list of recommendations to enable researchers to bridge the gap between the development and implementation of digital health tools.
KW - digital health
KW - interoperability
KW - patient involvement
KW - privacy
KW - reimbursement
KW - validity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197201757&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/s24123780
DO - 10.3390/s24123780
M3 - Article
C2 - 38931564
AN - SCOPUS:85197201757
SN - 1424-8220
VL - 24
JO - Sensors
JF - Sensors
IS - 12
M1 - 3780
ER -