ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital health technologies and the role of effective surveillance systems. While recent events have accelerated progress towards the expansion of digital public health (DPH), there remains significant untapped potential in harnessing, leveraging, and repurposing digital technologies for public health. There is a particularly growing need for comprehensive action to prepare citizens for DPH, to regulate and effectively evaluate DPH, and adopt DPH strategies as part of health policy and services to optimise health systems improvement. As representatives of the European Public Health Association's (EUPHA) Digital Health Section, we reflect on the current state of DPH, share our understanding at the European level, and determine how the application of DPH has developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also discuss the opportunities, challenges, and implications of the increasing digitalisation of public health in Europe.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Rapid developments and implementation of digital technologies in public health domains throughout the last decades have changed the landscape of health delivery and disease prevention globally. A growing number of countries are introducing interventions such as online consultations, electronic health records, or telemedicine to their health systems to improve their populations' health and improve access to health care. Despite multiple definitions for digital public health and the development of different digital interventions, no study has analyzed whether the utilized technologies fit the definition or the core characteristics of digital public health interventions. A scoping review is therefore needed to explore the extent of the literature on this topic. OBJECTIVE: The main aim of this scoping review is to outline real-world digital public health interventions on all levels of health care, prevention, and health. The second objective will be the mapping of reported intervention characteristics. These will include nontechnical elements and the technical features of an intervention. METHODS: We searched for relevant literature in the following databases: PubMed, Web of Science, CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Xplore, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Full-Text Collection. All original study types (observational studies, experimental trials, qualitative studies, and health-economic analyses), as well as governmental reports, books, book chapters, or peer-reviewed full-text conference papers were included when the evaluation and description of a digital health intervention was the primary intervention component. Two authors screened the articles independently in three stages (title, abstract, and full text). Two independent authors will also perform the data charting. We will report our results following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist. RESULTS: An additional systematic search in IEEE Xplore and ACM, performed on December 1, 2021, identified another 491 titles. We identified a total of 13,869 papers after deduplication. As of March 2022, the abstract screening state is complete, and we are in the state of screening the 1417 selected full texts for final inclusion. We estimate completing the review in April 2022. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this will be the first scoping review to fill the theoretical definitions of digital public health with concrete interventions and their characteristics. Our scoping review will display the landscape of worldwide existing digital public health interventions that use information and communication technologies. The results of this review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal in early 2022, which can serve as a blueprint for the development of future digital public health interventions. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/33404.