Those of us raised in the 1970s and 1980s had largely analogue upbringings. Stories of our first digital watch, or hours spent typing BASIC commands in to a ‘revolutionary' 1kB personal computer and then patiently trying (and often failing) to save them to an audio cassette tape, seem as remote to our children as when our parents spoke about the second world war or a time before television. To these digital natives it does not just seem like another time, but another world. In one generation we have seen a technology-driven revolution that is having profound effects in all areas of our lives. From cheap consumer electronics becoming widely available in the 1980s and 1990s, through the phenomenal uptake in mobile telephones and more recently smartphones, and the development of the worldwide web and the provision of accessible, affordable broadband connections, technology tools now pervade our lives and influence what we consume, how we consume it, and how we share our experiences with others. In healthcare, electronic systems are no longer confined to the intensive care unit or the GP’s desktop computer. Health systems around the world are, for example, investing in linked electronic records to support the delivery of care and to harness the data they contain to support research and real-time public health decision making; in integrated decision support systems which aim to maximize effectiveness and patient safety; in tools for delivering remote monitoring and self-management, and online consultations and interventions, supporting upstream models of health care, away from the hospital; and in wearable and implantable devices, providing new ways to capture and monitor physiological parameters.
Digital Health is a new interdisciplinary journal aiming to provide an open access forum for high quality, peer-reviewed academic papers in this emerging field of digital healthcare. Our ambition is to become a high impact international journal that carries articles of relevance to multiple stakeholders in the digital health revolution, including researchers, practitioners, patients, policy-makers, engineers and technology developers.
In setting the remit for this journal, we are taking a broad perspective on the scope of digital health and healthcare, covering all aspects of the use of information and communications technology in health services delivery and personal health and wellbeing. For us, this emerging field occurs at the intersection of three major trends in twenty-first century healthcare: the development of new technologies, especially networked communications such as internet and mobile technologies, and also trends towards smart, wearable and pervasive technologies; the need for health services to find new approaches to addressing the demands of an ageing population with ever increasing levels of long-term conditions, while reducing costs; and the role of the empowered patient and the shift in models of health service delivery towards patient-centred care, and patient-led care as for example seen in the increasing emphasis on self-management solutions.
We know that at the intersection of these trends our multiple stakeholders are attempting to harness digital health tools to address health needs: whether by finding novel approaches, or by improving on existing approaches and using technology to be more effective, efficient, or safer. We also know that the data produced by these tools, whether small or big data, and whether derived from genomic studies, or perhaps studies of social media, have the potential to yield important new insights. With that in mind we seek to publish papers and multimedia material relevant to digital health in its broadest definition.
A new journal will stand or fall on the quality of its content, and ultimately therefore on the originality and endeavor of our authors. As Joint Editors-in-Chief we therefore invite you to submit your manuscripts that explore this dynamic new field. This will always be an open access journal, and for a limited time there are no article processing fees.