HIFA colleagues
The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the WHO have recently issued an interesting collaborative report:
“Going digital for noncommunicable diseases: the case for action”
( https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/378478 )
The report’s foreword (by the WHO Director-General and the ITU Secretary-General) summarises the benefits and challenges of digital interventions for noncommunicable diseases; to quote :
“This report responds to requests from World Health Organization (WHO) Member States and the United Nations Economic and Social Council to provide support in promoting and implementing digital solutions to address the growing burden of NCDs”
“Digital technologies hold great promise for improving the delivery of health services and helping countries to progress towards universal health coverage. This report summarizes initial systematic work to make the economic case for implementing a set of evidence-based digital health interventions for NCD prevention and management, including telemedicine, mobile health and health chatbots. It also highlights the importance of improving access to relevant digital tools and infrastructure.”
“The report shows that expenditure of less than US$ 0.67 per patient per year could save over two million lives and US$ 199 billion over the next decade.”
“To realize the full potential of digital health, however, an equitable, affordable, reliable digital service and connectivity infrastructure must be built in a world in which one third of human¬ity remains offline.”
Interestingly the report follows a similar approach to the one used for the 2020 HIFA paper in BMJ Global Health (Universal access to essential health information: accelerating progress towards universal health coverage and other SDG health targets ( https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/5/e002475 ; which, incidentally, has now had over 5000 full text downloads! ).
Both the report and the HIFA paper identify various published examples of digital health interventions, e.g. mobile messaging, that had had a measurable positive impact on health or healthcare (see Annex 2 of the report). (The HIFA paper looked also at information interventions using non-digital media, the WHO/ITU report extends also to wider types of interventions e.g. telemedicine).
But the report goes a methodological step further in producing (see Annex 3) an initial assessment of the projected financial costs and benefits of implementing digital health interventions globally. It estimates that many would show returns on investment ratios of 10 or more (though lower – around 2 – for low-income countries because financial savings from increased productivity are less).
Some limitations – fully acknowledged in the report – are that research on the clinical effectiveness of digital health interventions is still nascent, that more analysis needs to be done that takes country-specific factors into account – and that the analytical framework does not account for the social value of health.
Nevertheless this report looks a valuable addition to understanding the current position and future potential of digital interventions to help address the growing global burden of Noncommunicable Diseases.
Geoff Royston
HIFA profile: Geoff Royston is an independent health analyst and researcher, former Head of Strategic Analysis and Operational Research in the Department of Health for England, and Past President of the UK Operational Research Society. His work has focused on informing the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes in health and social care, and on fostering the capabilities of others to work in these areas. Associated activities have included modelling for understanding the performance of complex systems, analysis and communication of risk, and horizon scanning and futures thinking. He has also worked on information and communication technology in the health sector, notably in leading the design and national launch of the telephone and online health information and advice service NHS Direct, and has been an adviser to OFCOM. He has served on both scientific and medical UK Research Council panels, and as an impact assessor for the UK higher education Research Excellence Framework. He has been a consultant for the World Health Organisation, and is a long-standing member of the EURO Working Group on Operational Research Applied to Health Services. He is a member of the HIFA Steering Group, HIFA Projects and Partnerships, HIFA-WHO Collaboration, mHEALTH-INNOVATE, mHIFA and HIFA evaluation Working Groups. geoff.royston AT gmail.com https://www.hifa.org/support/members/geoff
