Digital Health: Understanding the Benefit-Risk Patient-Provider Framework

The book "Digital Health" explores the benefits and risks of digital health technologies in healthcare, proposing ten categories of digital side effects that must be managed to realize their promise. It empowers health practitioners, patients, and technology providers to embrace the full potential of digital health technology while mitigating digital health harms.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 26 August 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

The healthcare industry is experiencing a rapid transformation due to the emergence of digital health, which is touted as the solution to address the flaws in healthcare delivery worldwide. This sector encompasses a wide range of technologies, from internet-connected wearable sensors to advanced diagnostics tests and innovative disease treatments. While digital health technology offers numerous benefits, such as increased convenience, personalized treatments, and accurate data capture of fitness and wellness, it also presents significant risks. These risks include the prevalence of technological crimes and abuses in the cyber realm, which have yet to be fully addressed by the medical community.

Despite the growing permanence of digital health technology in daily medical practice, the medical world has been slow to respond to these emerging risks. To address this gap, Eric D. Perakslis and Martin Stanley have authored a comprehensive volume that provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the benefits and risks of digital health technologies in practice. Drawing on expert interviews, original research, and personal storytelling, the authors explore the theory, science, and mathematics behind the benefits, risks, and values of emerging digital technologies in healthcare.

The book begins with an overview of biomedical product regulation and the evolution of digital technologies in healthcare. From there, Perakslis and Stanley propose a set of ten categories of digital side effects, or toxicities, that must be managed for digital health technology to realize its full potential. These toxicities include adversary-driven threats to privacy, such as physical security breaches, cyber security attacks, medical misinformation, and charlatanism, as well as non-adversary-driven threats, such as deregulation, cyberchondria, over-diagnosis/over-treatment, user error, and financial toxicity.

By arming readers with the knowledge to mitigate these digital health risks, the authors aim to empower individuals and organizations to make informed decisions about the adoption and implementation of digital health technologies. The book is a valuable resource for healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding the future of healthcare and the role of digital health in shaping it.

Weight: 398g
Dimension: 155 x 234 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197503140