Turning the Crisis Into an Opportunity: Digital Health Strategies Deployed During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Digital health technologies offer huge opportunities to reshape the healthcare system as we know it. From the adoption of electronic medical records to the mobile health applications and through every other disruptive technology, digital health solutions have promised a better quality of care at a more sustainable cost. However, the wide-scale adoption of these solutions is lacking behind. The most adverse scenarios often provide the opportunity to develop and test the capacity of digital health technologies to increase the efficiency of healthcare systems. Herein, we acknowledge the crucial role digital health solutions play during the COVID-19 global pandemic in support of public health policy, and we report on the strategies currently deployed at-scale during the outbreak in Catalonia (North-East Spain).