Integrated Care in the Era of COVID-19: Turning Vision Into Reality With Digital Health.

Angelina Kouroubali,Dimitrios G Katehakis,Haridimos Kondylakis

doi:10.3389/fdgth.2021.647938

Angelina Kouroubali, Dimitrios G Katehakis + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2021.647938

Copy DOI

Abstract

The lives of millions of people have been affected during the coronavirus pandemic that spread throughout the world in 2020. Society is changing establishing new norms for healthcare education, social life, and business. Digital health has seen an accelerated implementation throughout the world in response to the pandemic challenges. In this perspective paper, the authors highlight the features that digital platforms are important to have in order to support integrated care during a pandemic. The features of the digital platform Safe in COVID-19 are used as an example. Integrated care can only be supported when healthcare data is available and can be sharable and reusable. Healthcare data is essential to support effective prevention, prediction, and disease management. Data available in personal health apps can be sharable and reusable when apps follow interoperability guidelines for semantics and data management. The authors also highlight that not only technical but also political and social barriers need to be addressed in order to achieve integrated care in practice.

Highlights

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a worldwide pandemic [1], that has disrupted the lives of millions of people across the globe [2]
This paper presents the authors’ perspective on how digital technologies can help make integrated care a reality addressing the needs of governments to efficiently respond to pandemics such as COVID-19
In order to illustrate this perspective, the authors take as an example Safe in COVID-19 [13], a digital platform designed to address the need for sharing information between patients and physicians as well as providing data for public health authorities

Summary

Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a worldwide pandemic [1], that has disrupted the lives of millions of people across the globe [2]. These include appropriate and effective data management and semantics as well as interoperable personal health apps that address the needs of citizens to effectively support contact tracing while staying safe in the pandemic.

Results

Conclusion