New digital technologies offer great potential to fundamentally transform the way of delivering healthcare in the coming decades. Digital health encompasses nearly all areas in the healthcare system and is becoming increasingly more important, not only due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. In the future not only known processes should be digitalized but also new digital measures should aim at promoting a participation of the patient and actively incorporating the patient into the diagnosis and treatment processes. In the future smart devices and direct to consumer technologies give the “e-patients” easier access to their own health data, which have previously only been stored in data silos and were only communicated in a restricted manner. Advances in sensor technology and so-called wearables enable not only continuous monitoring and a contribution to these patient-centered healthcare data but also enable new diagnostic procedures and treatment outside the hospital. Hence, digitalization provides many approaches for an efficient and economical healthcare and prevention.
Digital-Health-Highlights 2020: Digitalisierung im Jahr der Pandemie