Digital health generally refers to the use of internet solutions, big data, and communications technologies to collect, share and manage health information to improve both individual and public health, as well as identify symptoms, plan treatment, monitor key health parameters, and monitor progress and treatment effects. One aspect of digital health, namely telemedicine has grown rapidly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the efforts in this field were designed to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic and to ensure that healthcare delivery could continue as much as possible. With the rise in the development and use of digital health products, there is a need to understand their impact on healthcare. However, evidence supporting comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these products is limited. Regulatory policy on the adoption of digital health products is lacking and there is an absence of clear guidelines to evaluate their health and economic benefits in clinical practice for policy makers and developers. Similarly, policy environments remain unclear as to how digital health products are classified: do the policies for medical technologies also cover digital health or is digital health yet another archetype? Additionally, there are important considerations with regards to the impact of digital health on health inequalities due to digital exclusion. How can digital health tools be utilised in a way that it contributes to the improvement of health outcomes instead of widening existing divides?
LSE Health Digital focuses on providing clarity on these types of questions. We are a team of experts from the public and private sector, as well as academia. Our shared experience ranges from policy analyses and advising to health technology assessment and economic evaluations to exploring, understanding, and addressing health inequalities.
What do we do
In more specific terms, LSE Health Digital has four areas of interest:
Governance of digital health
Policy and regulatory options surrounding digital health
Economic evaluations and reimbursement processes of digital health tools and therapeutics
Digital health and health inequalities
Outputs
Dr Robin van Kesselmoderated the seventh iteration of the WHO Decoding Data and Digital Healthwebinar series, which focused on the reimbursement, financing, and valuation of digital health technologies. You can watch the recording of the webinar here.
Dr Robin van Kesselmoderated the expert panel of the webinar "Regulation of AI in health in Europe" during the 2024 European Public Health Week (13-17 May). You can watch the recording of the webinar here.
Dr Robin van Kesselparticipated in the panel "Transforming digital health practice: The critical role of governance, investment and evaluation" at the Second WHO Symposium on the Future of Health Systems in a Digital Era in the European Region (5-6 Sept 2023). You can watch his talk here.
Dr Divya Srivastava gave the talk AI in Healthcare, assessing how AI is being deployed in healthcare.
Dr Robin van Kesselparticipated in the development of a report of the WHO Regional Office for Europe on the role of digital health technologies in women’s health, empowerment, and gender equality. The research unit played an advisory role during the conceptualisation of the methodology, the execution of the literature search, the interpretation of the findings, and the write-up of the report. You can read the report here.
Dr Robin van Kesselcontributed to a submission of evidence to UK Parliament in regard to the Online Safety Bill. The submission of evidence details the magnitude of problematic use of the internet as a current public health priority, as well as a set of recommendations to ensure the preparedness for online safety regulation. You can read the report here.
George Wharton Senior Lecturer, Department of Health Policy
g.a.wharton@lse.ac.uk
Professor Elias Mossialos Brian Abel-Smith Professor of Health Policy; Director, LSE Health; Co-Director, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
