Abstract

Healthcare has been going through major digital transformations due to the extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the sector. Many patients lack access to healthcare services due to lack of knowledge of the exitance of the service, physical or mental disability, distance, siege, lockdown and other possible reasons. Access to healthcare services has been impacted by a number of innovations including electronic health record, artificial intelligence, sensors, wearable devices, Internet of (medical) things, Blockchain, big data and other applications. COVID-19 has created new realities in accessing healthcare services through telehealth and telemedicine services as many countries have imposed lockdown and physical distancing. Digital health has been used to empower people, in general and patients in particular, to enable them to access healthcare services at the point of care or remotely. Healthcare professionals have been using digital health to enhance their knowledge, skills and more important to enable them to reach to patients to provide guidance and assistance. Using digital health solutions has a number of challenges which can be legal, ethical, infrastructural, human and material resources, training, education, attitude, cultural, organizational and behavioral. A number of national, regional and international agencies have adopted resolutions and developed strategies to support digital health implementation in countries. This chapter provides few examples to demonstrate how access to healthcare services is being enabled and facilitated by information and communication technology (ICT) through proper national planning of digital health.

Highlights

  • Access to health care means having “the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best health outcomes

  • In 2001 Gulliford, et al [2] provided a description of access to health services in which they said “Facilitating access is concerned with helping people to command appropriate health care resources in order to preserve or improve their health

  • In a review of definitions of digital health [14], the findings showed that digital health, as has been used in the literature, is more concerned about the provision of healthcare rather than the use of technology

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Summary

Introduction

Access to health care means having “the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best health outcomes. The extent to which a population ‘gains access’ to health care depends on financial, organizational and social or cultural barriers that limit utilization. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) defined access to health care “as having timely use of personal health services to achieve the best possible health outcome [3]. Personal/Family: The means and know how to access health services, income, health insurance, a regular source of care, travel, extent and quality of social relationships f.

Need Factors
Range of digital health solutions used to improve access to health care
Telemedicine
Health on the Internet
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for health
Blockchain in healthcare
The Internet of Things (ToT)
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Health
2.10 Monitoring, evaluation and quality management of health care services
Challenges to digital health implementation
National planning of digital health
Findings
Conclusion
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