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. 2020 Jul 6;7(7):e19246.
doi: 10.2196/19246.

Digital Health Management During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities, Barriers, and Recommendations

Becky Inkster  1   2 , Ross O'Brien  3 , Emma Selby  4 , Smriti Joshi  5 , Vinod Subramanian  5 , Madhura Kadaba  5 , Knut Schroeder  6   7 , Suzi Godson  8 , Kerstyn Comley  8 , Sebastian J Vollmer  2   9 , Bilal A Mateen  2   10
Affiliations

Digital Health Management During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities, Barriers, and Recommendations

Becky Inkster et al. JMIR Ment Health. .

Abstract

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, digital technologies have become a major route for accessing remote care. Therefore, the need to ensure that these tools are safe and effective has never been greater. We raise five calls to action to ensure the safety, availability, and long-term sustainability of these technologies: (1) due diligence: remove harmful health apps from app stores; (2) data insights: use relevant health data insights from high-quality digital tools to inform the greater response to COVID-19; (3) freely available resources: make high-quality digital health tools available without charge, where possible, and for as long as possible, especially to those who are most vulnerable; (4) digital transitioning: transform conventional offline mental health services to make them digitally available; and (5) population self-management: encourage governments and insurers to work with developers to look at how digital health management could be subsidized or funded. We believe this should be carried out at the population level, rather than at a prescription level.

Keywords: COVID-19; call to action; data insights; digital mental health; due diligence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: BI is an advisor for Wysa. RO has no conflicts of interest. ES is a clinical safety officer at Wysa. SJ is a lead psychologist at Wysa. VS is a research and compliance officer at Wysa. MK is a data scientist at Wysa. KS is the director of Expert Self Care Ltd (distrACT app). SG and KC are cofounders of MeeTwo. SV has received funding from iqvia for toolbox development. BM has no conflicts of interest.

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